Following is the latest used-car weekly report from Ricky Beggs of Black Book USA. This data is for the week ending July 21, 2012.

Even though the overall market continues to move down at increasing dollar and percentage levels, the number of adjustments at 1,941 per day throughout the week was the 3^rd lowest amount over the past 11 weeks. The average price change of -$63 for the cars and -$78 for the trucks were the highest level declines in all of the 2012 calendar year. The last time the cars adjusted this much for a weekly period was the week ending October 28, 2011, at -$75. One year ago the cars represented a stronger and more stable market declining by only -$25.

The trucks, at -$78 for the past week, were the largest adjustment over the past year. The most recent 2 week average change of -$68 is most comparable to the 2 week adjustments for the weeks ending September 9 & 16, 2011 at -$66.

Generally the overall average change will have about half of the segment types adjust more and the other half adjust less. This past week, within the car segments, only 3 were larger adjustments and all of these were significantly larger amounts. The Premium Sporty Cars (PSC) led the way at -$125. The other 2 were the Luxury Level Cars (LLC) at -$98 and the Entry Mid-size Cars at -$95. The next highest declining segment was the Compact Cars (SCC) at -$62. The smallest declining segment for the week was the -$31 for the Entry Level Cars (ELC).

One year ago the car segment adjustments were representative of a more stable market with an overall change level of -$25. There was one segment back then that was an increasing change of +3. This was the Premium Sporty Cars, the same segment that had the greatest change this past week.

As I mentioned earlier, trucks had the highest average change of any point in the past year. All 3 crossover segment types, along with the Luxury SUVs (LSU), declined by over $100. The smallest declining segment was the -$21 with the Mid-size Pickups (MPT). Overall we have had a pretty consistent declining truck market. 5 of the past 6 weeks the average segment change has been over -$54, for a 6 week average change just over -$59. Last year at this point in the year the average change was -$55 and of the 4 segments that were $100+ declining levels this past week, 3 of those were $100+ declines a year ago, the Mid-size Crossovers (MXU), the Full-size Crossovers (FXU) and the Luxury SUVs (LSU).

What could we expect going forward, and what do the historical trends tell us? The past 7 weeks the average percentage of the adjustments that were increasing has been at 16%. One year ago, for the next 7 week period, the average percentage of increasing adjustments was 19%.

During that time the average segment change was -$38 for the cars and -$43 for the trucks, significantly less than the changes this past week. From historical standards we should see softening values at possibly lower levels than the most recent couple of weeks.