I get a lot of questions about my views on inventory. For context, we can point to many business cycles over the past 30 years and we can find correlations between inventory-to-sales-ratios and boom/bust cycles across transportation and logistics, manufacturing, retail and other industries. But the question remains headed into Q4, are we going to face stockouts or overstocks?

The market narrative is that we are facing overstocks because companies got way out over their skis and ordered products to avoid tariffs and now they sit with too much inventory on hand and a tepid consumer. That just doesn’t fit the data and market reality, however. …

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index report for July came in 0.1% lower month-over-month at 98.7. It was 2.7% lower over the last six months (which was faster than the 1% contraction seen in 2024). Keep in mind, the index had been showing the economy already under signs of stress in 2024, and trade uncertainty continued that stress in 2025 thus far. …

Although not many of us give it much thought on a daily basis, but the US farmer is still under tremendous pressure and has been since the pandemic and the subsequent surge in input prices. Farm Bureau released insights from the latest August World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), and the gap between input prices and selling prices are extreme.

The chart below from Farm Bureau illustrates just how challenging this environment has been for the farming community. The prices paid by farmers still exceed those being received from commodity sales, and this year’s strong harvest season is going to make conditions even worse. …