Best Financial Markets Analysis Article It’s spring time and we’re thinking about maybe getting a new car. That and the recent problems at Toyota, plus the strong sales at Ford, and the not to distant bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, got us wondering how the car company stocks are doing — not that we are hot to own car company stocks (although we are hot to own a new car).

Toyota and Ford were once locked in a fierce fight for the most widely purchased cars — between the Camry and the Taurus. Ford had major rollover safety problems a few years back, and now Toyota has major accelerator safety problems. Ford survived and so will Toyota, we believe. Toyota outclassed Ford in the luxury market (but this week some Lexus models had some safety problems too). Toyota beat Ford to the hybrid market and they have “first mover” kind of advantage, but Ford is putting out a good line of hybrids, and the Fusion is an award winning model.

Ford is not the largest market share company, but it is having a bang-up sales year, and it avoided the effective nationalization that was the fate of GM, and is not being investigated by the US Congress as is Toyota.

China, not the US, is the dream growth market for car companies in 2010, having recently exceeded US total new car sales. Sad to say that premium brands the US companies once gathered from troubled European companies, have now been gathered by India (Jaguar) and China (Volvo) from troubled US companies (part of the continuing shift of economic power toward emerging Asia). That’s probably a good thing for Australia (EWA).

These charts for Toyota (TM), Ford (F), Nissan (NSANY), Honda (HMC) and Daimler (DAI) show quite different stock performances, with Ford, Nissan and Honda in better shape than Toyota and Daimler.

Each chart has three panels. The top panel shows the slope (rise over run) for the best fit trend line (linear regression) for 200 days and 600 days (a long-term and very long-term perspective on the direction of trend). The middle panel shows the 21-day (1-month) and 63-day (3-month) price channels, and the 100-day and 200-day simple moving averages, as well as the daily price range. The bottom panel shows the position of the price in the 63-day 2 standard deviation Bollinger Bands (lines 2 standard deviations away from the 63-day moving average) — the price is at the upper band when the value is 1.00 and is at the lower band when the value is 0.00.

A quick visual glance says that Ford, Nissan and Honda stocks are doing OK, while Toyota and Daimler are not.

Looking a bit more closely at the trends (600-day slope, 200-day slope and 63-day Bollinger Band price position), the stocks look like this:

Symbol : 600-day direction, 200-day direction, 63-day position
TM: Negative, Negative, Mid
F: Postive, Postive, Upper
NSANY: Negative, Postive, Upper
HMC: Flat, Postive, Mid
DAI: Negative, Flat, Upper

So much for the stocks. Now off to the show rooms to see what driving pleasures may await.

Holdings Disclosure:
As of April 16, 2010, we hold EWA in some, but not all managed accounts, and not necessarily all in any single account. We do not have current positions in any other securities discussed in this document in any managed account.

By Richard Shaw
http://www.qvmgroup.com

Richard Shaw leads the QVM team as President of QVM Group. Richard has extensive investment industry experience including serving on the board of directors of two large investment management companies, including Aberdeen Asset Management (listed London Stock Exchange) and as a charter investor and director of Lending Tree ( download short professional profile ). He provides portfolio design and management services to individual and corporate clients. He also edits the QVM investment blog. His writings are generally republished by SeekingAlpha and Reuters and are linked to sites such as Kiplinger and Yahoo Finance and other sites. He is a 1970 graduate of Dartmouth College.

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilizing methods believed reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any trading losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Do your own due diligence.

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