The Atlanta Fed trimmed its GDPNow estimate for third-quarter real GDP growth to 3.6% on Oct. 8, down from 3.7% two days earlier.
The cut followed a weaker wholesale trade report from the Census Bureau released the same morning.
Wholesale inventories rose a downwardly revised 0.5% in August, below the 0.7% advance estimate, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said. Stocks at wholesalers totaled $964.2B at the end of August, up 6.4% from a year earlier.
The model's nowcast for how much inventory investment adds to third-quarter growth fell to 1.98 percentage points from 2.07.
Inventories are doing most of the heavy lifting in the quarter. Strip out that contribution and the underlying growth picture looks far more ordinary.
Restocking and imports are shaping the quarter
Businesses have been rebuilding stockpiles after drawing them down for five straight quarters, pushed by consumer spending and AI-related investment.
That restocking has pulled in goods from abroad. Capital goods imports hit a record high in August, a sign business spending on equipment stayed strong through the July-September period.
Imports subtract from GDP, and economists estimate trade could subtract as much as 2.5 percentage points from third-quarter growth.
Wholesale sales reached $817.5B in August, up 1.8% from July. The inventories-to-sales ratio sat at 1.18, versus 1.28 in August 2025, meaning stock levels are leaner relative to demand than a year ago.
Durable goods inventories at wholesalers rose 0.8%. Nondurables were flat, with petroleum down 3.9%.
What this means
GDPNow is a running, real-time estimate that updates as new data lands, not an official government figure.
The headline tracks inflation-adjusted growth from the previous quarter at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, rather than growth from a year earlier.
It also moves around a lot. A single data release shifted the estimate by a tenth of a point, and more revisions are coming before the first official reading.
For comparison, the Bureau of Economic Analysis raised its Q2 estimate to 2.2% from 1.5%, beating economist expectations. Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, a cleaner read on underlying demand, grew 4.6% in that quarter.
Core Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation cooled over the same stretch, a combination the Fed tends to welcome.
The next GDPNow update arrives in a week, bringing the tracker closer to the first release of Q3 GDP. Inventory and trade swings could wash out much of that 3.6% before the first official Q3 reading lands.
