The automotive industry crisis of 2008 destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars within months automakers worldwide, struggled to survive a massive decline in sales. The u.s government bailed out gm and chrysler, while ford had to secure a line of credit from the government. Toyota experienced the first loss in 70 years, and honda saw its car sales dropped, 31.6 percent dealerships dropped like flies and were forced to make permanent changes. The 2.8 trillion dollar automobile industry fell apart overnight, but what, if i told you that our current situation is two times worse, that's what a leading indicator is showing and the ceo of arkhanvest kathy wood has spotted these problems.

Serious trouble lies ahead and the world is about to wake up to a complete disaster. The university of michigan consumer sentiment survey is known as one of the most reliable surveys in the financial industry. One of the key components that the survey includes is the following question. Speaking of the automobile market, do you think the next 12 months, or so will be a good time or a bad time to buy a new vehicle such as a car, pickup van or sport utility vehicle? This question has been asked since 1961, which gives it an extensive data set to compare it to.

As you can see from this graph, the percent of respondents indicating that it's a bad time to purchase a vehicle has increased to record heights. This level of negative consumer sentiment is the highest that it has ever been in the history of the survey. Contrary to what this graph is showing automakers are claiming that the demand for vehicles is robust, but that's not the case at all. The rising automobile prices are all due to a lack of supply, rather than a lack of demand.

Dealer inventories have dropped to record lows and that is causing prices to increase drastically. Just like the level of inventories, the consumer demand for vehicles is at an all-time low. Automakers are rapidly attempting to order new semiconductors for their vehicles, but the consumer demand likely won't be there by the time the chips arrive. The automobile industry is undergoing an accelerating shift towards electric vehicles, that is, keeping consumers on the sidelines for new developments top that off with the fact that car prices just keep on increasing year after year, and the automobile industry is in serious trouble.

The average new car price has increased by eleven thousand dollars in the past three years, which is hurting consumer sentiment. The university of michigan cited the reason for the low consumer sentiment as high prices that demonstrates that car prices are not sustainable at the current price level. The mannheim used vehicle value index perfectly demonstrates the decelerating growth of car prices. Everyone knows that the exponential price increase in the auto industry can't be sustained, there's a massive price bubble and the supply is starting to catch up as supply increases disproportionately to decreasing demand.

Automakers and dealerships worldwide could be left in a glut. A glut is when there is an oversupply of a good that leads to a massive crash in prices. Elon musk, lisa, sue and gm have all been saying that chip supply constraints are starting to dissipate. Everything that i just described is what arkan vest has been focusing on particularly analyst.

Sam korus automobile sales are already showing signs of a rebound from the chip shortage. Total vehicle sales recently came in at 15.5 million vehicles in january 2022, which was up almost 20 percent from the prior month. That is obviously a substantial increase and is likely fulfilling the remaining consumer demand from the supply shortage. Once the consumer demand for higher priced vehicles is satisfied, urgents demand problems will likely appear.

Cathy believes that all of these factors are building upon each other to instigate the biggest price crash in the history of the auto industry. In the survey deeply buried in the survey, there's a a part that says or ask the consumer is now a good time to buy a car, and i hadn't looked at this statistic in quite some time, but it is, it has dropped to a new low 46.. It is lower than the low in 0809, which was roughly a hundred and precovet. It was running at 150., so it's about a third of that and it just dropped to a new low.

Now this flies in the face of what we saw in january. Auto sales moving up quite strongly from 12.4 million units in december to 15 million in january, and what we believe has happened there is the various automakers had been building up inventories at the factories or near the factories just waiting to put in chips, as as we Heard uh all about the chip shortage during the last year, and so they they are now saying that that chip shortage is alleviating. So there have been people waiting for uh their orders to be delivered. But if this survey is right, there's not going to be much follow through the impending crash of the auto industry is not just specific to automobiles, but rather goods in general, total business inventories are starting to increase significantly.

In december of 2021, the inventories to sales ratio increased to 1.29, which was up 3.2 percent from the previous month. A 3.2 increase might not seem like much, but that's a 38 increase when annualized such a rapid increase is a sign that new supply plants are starting to ramp up amd ceo lisa sue explained this before at a conference. Lisa sue stated that, because of the supply shortages, many businesses have invested in new supply plants. The problem is that those supply plants don't go into production immediately.

The average supply plant takes roughly 18 to 24 months to go into production. Most businesses invested in supply plants in late 2020, which puts the time frame for a supply rebound in early to late 2022. Kathy has been predicting a crash in good prices for a while, but her thesis hasn't played out. Yet this has caused the arkhan vest's etfs to decline substantially.

However, if she is correct about the coming trends, then the world is about to be shocked in a considerable manner. There are two secular trends for inflation. The first one is disruptive innovation competing with traditional companies which forces prices to be lower due to higher competition. One instance of this is in the auto industry.

Gas powered vehicles have to compete with electric or hybrid vehicles. This new and going competition means that gas vehicle prices will have to be lowered in order to compete. The second trend is the fact that improving technology allows for lower prices due to production efficiency. If we go back to the auto example that we talked about, evs are the perfect manifestation of lowering prices.

Battery prices are declining year after year, which is allowing evs to be more accessible to the public. That type of innovation is inherently deflationary because consumers get to purchase the goods at lower prices. The other inflationary trend is cyclical, which is the growing inventories that we talked about earlier kathy recently went on cnbc to explain her outlook on inflation. The key with their thesis is that she believes that inflation is centered around supply instead of demand and therefore will cool down as supply catches up the supply chain.

Issues have lasted so much longer than we anticipated that they would take a while to work out, but not two years. So. The question is: is this supply chain related and will these inflation metrics unwind? I think a lot of what's going on is supply chain related. I know it's become unfashionable to use the word transitory, and so we won't because it's lasted longer than we expected.

However, i do think there's going to be there that the deflationary forces that are building up in the economy today are are pretty strong. Two are secular, one is cyclical, and the bond market is sort of getting this. If you look at what's happened to the yield curve, so the difference between long rates and short rates, it has flattened uh from i think, 155 basis points last march to 45 basis. Points a day and if the fed did go 50 basis points in in march, which they might they might, i think that it would be one and done then we'll end up with an inverted yield curve, and then what are people going to think? Well, an inverted deal curve and the flattening yield curve says watch out something's going on here.

Either growth is going to disappoint or inflation's, going to be much lower than expected or vote, and - and we think both is right, and so that's the cyclical source uh. There's an inventory build up. If you look at the record-breaking inventory, build up in the fourth quarter, gdp report, you'll you'll get a sense, while inventory sales ratios might be low as the consumer switches off here. And if you look at the last three months of either retail sales or consumption, the consumer has gone pretty flat.

Meanwhile, you've got the double ordering and triple ordering by manufacturers and wholesalers because they were missing sales before so. I think there's a big inventory problem brewing here. It is going to hit within the next six months in terms of that recognition, the auto industry is the epitome of the economy. At large.

Inventories have been extremely low for the past year, which have led prices to skyrocket. New vehicle prices have increased by over 12 percent in the past 12 months, which we all know isn't sustainable. This is similar to the growing consumer prices in the overall economy that have been increasing at concerning rates. The key point with this macroeconomic situation is that the consumer demand is lower than it has ever been just like the chip shortage in the auto industry.

Overall inventories in the global economy are starting to rebound once the new supply plants enter the economy. That will be the ultimate chakra of 2022 that will lead to a critical economic slowdown used. Car prices fell by roughly 20 in the 2008 recession, which was an immense amount at the time. However, given the massive price increase in used car prices, we could easily see a 60 or even 70 percent crash to return to previous price levels.

The bubble is about to burst in the auto industry as the supply shortage eases off soon. Let me know what you think about auto prices down below. Do you think that the bubble will collapse? If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button and subscribe and i'll see you in the next one.