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How appropriate that on election we have a story about how the US Treasury is considering options for divesting itself of our stake in the auto industry. One of the options it is focuing on is on a series of public offering. Taxpayers have sunk more than $50 billion in bailout and bankruptcy financing in GM and more than $14 billion in Chrysler this year...

Daniel Howes' column in the Detroit News nails it in his opening paragraph. Old Detroit lives! Here, in the week before Ford Motor Co...

 AR Index     613.08  +1.46  (+0.24%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  80.31  +1.38 GM        0.65    -0.05 Ford      7.57   -0.05 Dow 10092.19  +206.39   (+2.09%) According to freep.com, Ford might show a 3rd quarter profit, if analysts at JP Morgan are correct. They say Ford is benefitting from an increase in Ford F-150 pickup sales, reduced incentive spending and a surge in sales sparked by the federal government's cash-for-clunkers program. So while this seems to be good news, I think we have to wait for the Cash For Clunkers effect to wear off before we'll get a truer picture of how things are

AR Index     611.62  +39.17  (+6.84%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  78.93  +3.86 GM        0.70    +0.06 Ford      7.62   +0.57 Dow 9885.80  +286.05   (+2.98%)  The year-to-date chart is looking like things are moving in the right direction doesn't it? Not bad considering the anchor being dragged along that is GM.

AR Index     572.45  -39.10  (-6.39%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  75.07  -5.56 GM        0.64    -0.07 Ford      7.05   -0.44 Dow 9599.75  -189.61   (-1.94%) So you wonder why the "imports" (you can hardly call them that anymore) are so attractive to people? Check out "Saturn and Me: GM Loses a Customer" by Allan Sloan in the Washington Post. Once a customer loses trust in a brand, it's very difficult to get it back, and GM has managed to do that with so many customers who used to be loyal buyers that it's hard to envision them regaining even a shred of their former status in the automotive world.

AR Index     611.54  +21.94  (+3.72%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  80.63  -2.06 GM        0.71    -0.05 Ford      7.49   +0.66 Dow 9789.36  +10.50   (+0.11%) First the "or not"... What a shock. They're talking about September auto sales being way down again...

AR Index     589.60  -26.43  (-4.29%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  82.69  -0.42 GM        0.76      0.00 Ford      6.83    -0.56 Dow 9778.86  +152.06   (+1.58%) Another slight drop at the pump this week, although oil and gas prices pretty much seem to have disconnected from reality... which reminds me, Dub Schwartz informs me he's got a doozie of a reality disconnect story to relate to us on Saturday.

AR Index     620.92  -12.01  (-1.90%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  83.90  -1.29 GM        0.79    -0.01 Ford      7.43    -0.17 Dow 9441.27  -55.01   (-0.58%) Just looking at positive/negative weeks for the Index in 2009 so far. Not a horrible looking chart even though it would be nice to see everything above the zero line, but as they say, you can't have everything... where would you keep it all??

AR Index     632.92  +7.49  (+1.20%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  85.19  -0.56 GM        0.80    +0.05 Ford      7.60   +0.19 Dow 9496.28  -13.00   (-0.14%) Like the title says, I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to the relationship between reality and the price of crude oil or gasoline. But the ratio of crude oil price to prices at the pump seems to be settling into about a 25 to 1 relationship. Not sure I'm ready to call it a trend since the commodity markets, especially in oil, don't seem to behave rationally a lot of the time, but there it is.

AR Index     625.43  +6.50  (+1.05%) Stocks of individual interest Toyota  85.75  +2.04 GM        0.75    -0.12 Ford      7.41   +0.04 Dow 9509.28  +373.94   (+4.09%) Things continue to look up for the AR Index (despite dragging along GM) and I thought it would be interesting to use a chart of Ford's stock price for the Apr-Aug  period to show what a difference a year makes. I really hope that Cash for Clunkers doesn't kill this momentum when the cars that would have sold in October don't because they were bought under C4C.