As oil prices have spiked in the last few weeks, several consumer-related groups fell like dominoes. Today, the legacy auto stocks have had their number called.
We’ll start with General Motors (GM). The stock has been in a steady uptrend for the last few months, but a nearly 4% decline today has it back below its 50-day moving average (DMA) and to its lowest level since late July. As far as breakdowns go, GM is a mild one. If the rest of the group’s charts looked like GM’s, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
Have you seen a Ford (F) chart lately? Outside of a sharp drop in the spring and a subsequent rally in May on reports that the company was getting into the battery business for data centers, F has been mostly in a sideways range in the low-teens.
Today, F is down over 4%, taking it below the 200-DMA to its lowest level since mid-May. From a technical perspective, the stock broke below the low end of its recent range, and the last time that happened in the spring, it traded with an 11-handle.
Last and certainly least is Stellantis (STLA). Like GM and F, the stock is down over 4% today, but unlike the other two stocks, the maker of Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler has done nothing but trade down. The stock is down more than 50% from its 52-week high and is not only at a 52-week low, but at its lowest level since coming public in 2021.
While rising oil prices have been a headwind for all three stocks, STLA’s problems go deeper. The company already had to write off a massive EV bet, and it also has much more exposure to Europe, where a flood of lower-priced Chinese EVs has been taking share from the legacy OEMs. For STLA, the oil move is landing on a business that was already losing ground.
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