Official name: Monthly Wholesale Trade

What exactly? A measure of both sales and inventories at the wholesale (as opposed to retail or manufacturing) stage of production.

Source: Census Bureau

Frequency: Monthly

Released when? Around the 8th of the month at 10 a.m. Eastern. Data for two months prior.

Market importance: Little. Moves markets only occasionally. Helps to predict business inventories and hence the inventory component of gross domestic product -- but wholesale inventories typically account for only about 26% of aggregate inventories. Not worth tracking.