Grade The Analysts: Edmund's Caldwell Beats Bankers, Truecar
US Car sales are up a solid 10 percent in October, and Automotive News [sub] has the October Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) at 13.26 million. I need to hop on a plane to Tokyo, so I go with this number for the time being. 13.26 is pretty much the average of our analyst guesses. As for the Detroit 3, General Motors disappointed at 2 percent (and threw the analysts off), Ford and Chrysler came in as expected at 6 and 27 percent respectively. And how did our analysts fare?
The sharpest crystal ball was in the hands of Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds. She came closest to the Detroit 3, and pretty close to the SAAR. Our last month winner Road Lache of Deutsche Bank takes second, followed by Jesse Toprak of TrueCar. Peter Nesvold of Jefferies and Adam Jones of Morgan Stanley came closest to the SAAR, but having supplied no Detroit 3 numbers, they were penalized. If you want to win in this game, you need to guess what Detroit does. Thems the rules.
RankAnalyst GMFord Chrysler SAARSAAR DiffOEM DiffOverall1Jessica Caldwell (Edmunds.com)6.9%8.0%27.0%13.41.06%6.90%7.96%2Rod Lache (Deutsche Bank)5.5%4.1%24.0%13.01.96%8.40%10.36%3Jesse Toprak (TrueCar.com)4.7%7.4%33.0%13.41.06%10.10%11.16%4Brian Johnson (Barclays)4.3%8.8%19.0%13.30.30%13.10%13.40%5Chris Ceraso (Credit Suisse)7.2%7.5%20.0%13.20.45%13.70%14.15%6Patrick Archambault (Goldman Sachs)8.7%6.5%35.0%13.20.45%15.20%15.65%7Seth Weber (RBC)9.2%8.6%36.0%13.41.06%18.80%19.86%8Peter Nesvold (Jefferies)7.1%1.8%NA13.30.30%109.30%109.60%9Adam Jonas (Morgan Stanley)NANA NA13.30.30%300.00%300.30%10Himanshu Patel (JPMorgan)NANA NA13.20.45%300.00%300.45%11Alan Baum (Baum & Associates) NANA NA13.41.06%300.00%301.06%12Itay Michaeli (Citigroup) NANA NA13.11.21%300.00%301.21%13Jeff Schuster (J.D. Power) NANA NA13.11.21%300.00%301.21%14George Magliano (IHS Automotive) NANA NA12.92.71%300.00%302.71%Average6.7%6.6%28.0%13.2Actual2.0%6.0%27.0%13.26
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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To be fair, Edmunds is armed with real time sales data from dealer sales. The bankers job is first to provide opinions on the automakers stocks for their customers. As a part of this, they make some educated assumptions on the SAAR. Guessing monthly sales is a part of that, but a secondary part of the job. I'm going to bet on the organization with insider info to be more accurate 10 times out of 10.
Carmakers should enjoy the party while it lasts. The bar is about to run out of booze. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/americans-incomes-have-dropped-67-percent-during-recovery_607640.html