July Vehicle Sales Forecast: Increase to 13.3 million SAAR

From WardsAuto: Not a Surge but July U.S. Light-Vehicle Sales Tracking Above Past Two Months (pay content).  Brief excerpt:

"Wards Intelligence partner LMC Automotive is pegging the entire year at 14.3 million units, meaning the second-half SAAR will have to total 14.8 million units, up from first-half 2022’s 13.7 million ..."

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and Wards forecast for July (Red).

The Wards forecast of 13.3 million SAAR, would be up about 2% from last month, and down 9% from a year ago (sales were starting to weaken in mid-2021, due to supply chain issues).

Vehicle sales is usually a transmission mechanism for Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy (far behind housing).  However, this time, vehicle sales have been suppressed by supply chain issues, and will probably not be significantly impacted by higher interest rates.