If you’re looking into buying your dream car in the next few months – think twice!
At the bottom of the stock crash in early 2009, I bought a dream car – a 2008 Maserati GranTurismo – at 22% off. I got the manufacturing margin and the dealer margin completely taken off. Six months earlier, I would’ve paid a slight premium. Instead, I got a discount.
So hear me out – if you’ve really got your eyes on that Chevy Corvette Stingray or Mercedes-Benz convertible or whatever, wait!
Car sales are going to be demolished when they fall off the demographic cliff in the next year or so.
Two of the most successful investors in the world, Warren Buffett and Steve Soros, have recently made major investments in auto dealerships.
Are they going to live to regret that!
They just bought a sector at its top. Doh!
Little do they know, auto companies are going to crash as bad or worse as housing did.
That’s right – as retail sales have continued to weaken, now the brightest sector is about to go out as well!
Only demographics would’ve told you that… just like they did with Japan’s peak in late 1989, and our own recession in 2007.
Here’s the deal: new cars are the last major durable goods and financed purchase that consumers make.
New car sales peak at age 54. Before that it’s furniture, age 46. Earlier on, it’s home buying – age 37 to 41.
After the kids leave the nest between age 46 when their kids graduate from high school, or 51 for the more affluent whose kids graduate from college, parents no longer have to buy a boring ol’ minivan to cart them to school, soccer practice, ecstasy parties… or whatever it is they’re doing!
Finally, they buy their dream car: a four-door luxury sedan, a high-end sports car – or a really badass pickup truck.
Sure enough, these are the segments that have done so well in recent years as the boomers marched toward age 54 into this year.
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