#GradeTheAnalysts

November was a rough month on our analysts. The surprisingly strong showing of Chrysler threw everybody’s aim off. Real-time powered Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds takes the top spot again – but with a degree of precision that would have landed her back in the field in the preceding months. She won because the others did worse.

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?

Analyst GMFord Chrysler SAARGeorge Magliano (IHS Automotive) NANA NA12.9Rod Lache (Deutsche Bank)5.5%4.1%24.0%13.0Itay Michaeli (Citigroup) NANA NA13.1Jeff Schuster (J.D. Power) NANA NA13.1Chris Ceraso (Credit Suisse)7.2%7.5%20.0%13.2Himanshu Patel (JPMorgan)NANA NA13.2Patrick Archambault (Goldman Sachs)8.7%6.5%35.0%13.2Adam Jonas (Morgan Stanley)NANA NA13.3Brian Johnson (Barclays)4.3%8.8%19.0%13.3Peter Nesvold (Jefferies)7.1%1.8%NA13.3Alan Baum (Baum & Associates) NANA NA13.4Jesse Toprak (TrueCar.com)4.7%7.4%33.0%13.4Jessica Caldwell (Edmunds.com)6.9%8.0%27.0%13.4Seth Weber (RBC)9.2%8.6%36.0%13.4Average6.7%6.6%28.0%13.2

Today, October new car sales will be announced, and they are expected to be good. Analysts polled by Bloomberg show rare unity: They expect a Seasonally Adjusted Average Rate of sales (SAAR) of 13.2 million on average, and the spread is only 500,000. Likewise, analysts agree that Ford and GM will each add around 6 percent in sales, whereas Chrysler will jump by around 28 percent.

September Light Vehicle sales, which will be out on Monday, could rise to levels not seen since April, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg reckon. The consensus average stands at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 12.8 million units. The people who have the real time sales data even think it’s a bit higher: Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds figures 12.9 million SAAR, Jesse Toprak of Truecar even expects 13.1 million. And guess who saved the American bacon? The Japanese.

This is round two of TTAC’s “Grade The Analysts”. Last time, we graded only on how closely analysts hit the SAAR number ( table provided by Bloomberg.). If we would have done this this time, all would have received an A or better. The guesses were THAT close. The overall SAAR for August was 12.1 million, and none of the analysts did bet on less than 11.9 or better than 12.3. Instead of giving them all gold stars, we made it a bit more interesting.