An inventory equal to 90 days sales is as much as even the strongest

Hey egmat / AndrewN / Experts

Could you please explain the meaning of the sentence along with sentence structure.

"An inventory equal to 90 days sales is as much as even the strongest businesses carry, and then only as a way to anticipate higher prices or ensure against shortages."

Hello, Green2k1. To be honest, I would like to see the original source material, since 90 days is used to modify sales and should therefore indicate possession: 90 days' sales (i.e. the sales, in a manner of speaking, belong to those 90 days, since the sales occur within those days; consider other uses such as The Beatles' song "A Hard Day's Night" or a severance package that included four months' pay). Alternatively, the preposition of could be inserted to indicate the same possession: 90 days of sales. In any case, the sentence is conveying in the first half that even the most successful (I guess this is what is meant by strongest) businesses stock an inventory that would be equivalent to what they would sell in 90 days. The second part of the sentence, after the comma, further explains that these businesses do not employ this strategy readily, but more as a backup in case prices go up or shortages occur.

In terms of the sentence structure, its basic framework is independent clause + and + phrase. Within the independent clause, there is a comparison, X is as much as Y, between an inventory amount and what certain businesses carry (in terms of their inventory amount). Jump across the comma, and you get this strange-looking and then only as concession that comments on the verb carry and the amount of inventory. You are to understand that businesses carry a certain amount of inventory only as a way to X or Y. Remember, an infinitive—here, to anticipate and [to] ensure—functions as an adjective, an adverb, or a noun, not, confusingly enough, as a verb, so we cannot call the latter half of the sentence a clause.

I hope this information proves useful to you. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew
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AndrewN
Thank you for the explanation.

I was not able to extract much meaning while solving this question, so just selected the choice on the basis of idiom, but this approach may not work in higher difficulty level question. Any advice on how to handle such questions.

"An inventory equal to 90 days sales is as much as even the strongest businesses carry, and then only as a way to anticipate higher prices or ensure against shortages"

thought that bold face is acting as dependent clause and Carry is its verb. If i understood the explanation correctly, is it like -

An inventory equal to 90 days sales (X - Noun Phrase) is as much as
even the strongest businesses carry (such level of inventory - Y - Noun inferred),
and (they carry such a level of inventory) then only as a way
----------to anticipate (cover up) higher prices or
----------(to)ensure against shortages (adjective - modifying the inventory)"

Hello again, Green2k1. As the old saying goes, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." If an idiom worked for you as a decision point in this question, then it may work as well in some other question, difficult or not. There is little to be gained by speculating on what you could see on the screen. Just approach each question and each answer choice on its own merits. By the way, you correctly identified the boldfaced portion above: it is a dependent clause within the comparison. But unless such knowledge can guide your hand in determining whether the comparison is somehow skewed or the sentence breaks down altogether, you need not focus on the grammar so much. In more challenging questions especially, the correct answer is often one of five grammatically sound iterations of the same sentence; the difference lies in the clear and concise expression of vital meaning.

- Andrew
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egmat GMATNinja KarishmaB mikemcgarry MartyTargetTestPrep
Could you please help explain how to tackle this question in details?
Appreciate your contribution.

A look at the split in the answer choices:



Shows me that I'm switching between 'as much as,' and 'so much that' or some other arrangement, which is a comparison/idiom issue. I also notice that 'even' is moving around. 'Even' is a modifier, so I need to think about what should be modified by it.

Idiomatically, I can't say 'so much as' or 'as much that.' This is just something to know.

The comparison idioms are:

as ____ as
so _____ that
so _____ as to (but you couldn't say 'so much as to.' The _____ needs to be a quality of some kind: so plentiful as to, so tall as to, so expensive as to...')

(*in general, 'so ___ that' and 'so ____ as to' are pretty interchangeable. "The building was so tall that it cast a shadow over the entire road." "The building was so tall as to cast a shadow over the entire park." Given the choice, 'so ____ that' is preferred.)

So this idiom split takes us to A and E. Now it's the placement of 'even' (which I could have used first). 'Even' means something like 'the last thing included.' So, to quote the great film '3:10 to Yuma,' "Even bad men love their mamas." Meaning 'bad men--who you might not expect in this group--are also in the group of people who love their mamas.'

It wouldn't make sense, for example, to write "Even risk takers love sky-diving." Risk takers are the ones we'd *expect* to love sky-diving. "Even those who typically don't take risks love sky-diving" makes much more sense.

The 'even' in this case needs to modify the strongest businesses, not the quantity of sales in inventory. You might think the strongest businesses don't need to hold this much in inventory, but EVEN THEY do. 'A' puts the modify on those businesses.

Another issue is that if we use the idiom 'so much that,' we need a 'subject-verb' after it. "An inventory of 90 days worth of sales is so much that the largest businesses... [do what? 'have trouble finding the storage?' 'don't recommend keeping this much?' we need a verb!].
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thevenus is right, others are wrong.


for example: [positive]
Even before the King e-book was so much as announced, Microsoft had bet on the death of paper.

"not so much as"& if sb so much as..."mean even. (but that is not for this question.)