Ingram Micro (IM) 4Q:07 Results

Ingram Micro is one of the largest IT distributors in the world. They sell everything. Their customers aren't consumers -- they sell to vendors and resellers, who in turn sell to consumers and businesses. The quarter was fine but the outlook was awful -- they're very cautious on IT spending in Europe and the United States. They said holiday sales were normal but clearly they've seen dramatic softness since.

This tells us is the retail channel isn't doing much restocking right now. Business is slow. It will be important to pay attention to inventory levels at the consumer electronics retailers.

Ingram guided to their worst sequential growth rate since early 2001 -- which for perspective was post-bubble pop and really bad.

Not a good omen, my friends.