Monday Signal Brief: Week of July 20, 2026

Every Monday the market hands you a number for the whole used-car business and expects you to run your week on it. This week that number is 98.27, and it is close to useless. The average tells you the lot is soft. It does not tell you which cars are pulling it down and which are quietly holding their ground. That difference is the entire job at the appraisal desk, so that is where this starts.

The lot did not soften. It split in half, and the halves have names.

DARPI Near-New closed the week at 98.27, off 1.10 points. Under that flat-looking composite, the market pulled apart: two segments fell hard while two rose, and for the first time DARPI can tell you exactly which model years are behind each move. Large SUVs are dropping. Cars are climbing. The average in the middle hides the only thing that matters.

Midsize SUV dropped 6.32 index points in a single week, the largest move in the index, and it is not a vague category number. It is the 2023 Grand Cherokee, the 2023 Explorer, and the 2023 Traverse, three of the highest-volume used vehicles in the country, all softening at once. When one of those rolls in on trade this week, you are not appraising against a soft SUV market in the abstract. You are appraising against a specific car that is near the front of the decline. Price it to where it is heading, not to where the segment average sat last month. That one adjustment is the difference between a unit that turns and a unit that sits.

While the big stuff falls, the cheap stuff is winning

The other half of the split is the opportunity. Midsize Car rose 1.06 points and Compact Car rose 0.52, and Midsize Car is the only segment in the index where price is climbing and supply is shrinking at the same time. Both arrows point the same way. When payments get heavy, demand rotates down into cars that clear under $27,000, and right now that is the Altima, the Accord, the Camry, the Corolla, and the Sentra. Do not give one of those away on trade this week to chase a deal. The data is holding your price up. Let it.

The used EV lot is the cleanest buy in the market

Since the June baseline, used EV prices are down about 2 percent while supply is up roughly 14 percent, more than six thousand additional electric cars landing on dealer lots in six weeks as asking prices fell. That is the widest price-down, supply-up gap in the index, and it reads as one thing: opportunity for the buyer, risk for the holder. Lease returns and steady production are filling lots faster than shoppers are clearing them. The dealer pricing EVs to today turns them. The dealer still anchored to a six-week-old appraisal is aging a car into a falling line. If you take EVs in, shorten your recon-to-retail window and put your appraisal number where the market actually is.

Facebook is not your competitor. It is your acquisition list.

Private sellers ask far less than dealers on paper, a Toyota median near $13,600 against $27,000 at franchised stores, because private cars are older, higher-mileage, and carry no recon, warranty, or financing. That gap is not a threat. It is a map. And on the cars that matter it flips: private Model Y sellers ask about $37,000 on cars with half the miles of the dealer inventory, nearly four thousand dollars over the dealer median, and they sit close to a year longer before they move. Better cars, worse pricing, no clock discipline. For a store running a buy center, that is the whole game. When a shopper says they saw one cheaper on Facebook, the answer is not to flinch. It is to explain what they are actually comparing.

Cheat sheet: Days on Market is not Day Supply

These two get used like synonyms and they are opposites in what they tell you.

Days on Market looks backward. It measures how long the cars you have already sold sat before they moved. It grades your past pricing and merchandising.

Day Supply looks forward. It measures how many days of inventory you are holding at your current sales pace. It tells you whether you are about to be overstocked or short.

A store can have great Days on Market and dangerous Day Supply at the same time: everything you sold moved fast, and you just bought sixty units of the segment that is now falling. One is a report card. The other is a warning light. We are publishing the full breakdown, with where each one actually belongs in your weekly numbers, on the blog this week.

The freshest man on the field

The World Cup final gave us the best individual performance of the tournament, and it came from the man who lost. Emiliano Martinez made eleven saves on Sunday, the most ever recorded in a final, some of them on a broken finger. Argentina still lost, one to nothing.

Here is why. Argentina went ninety minutes without a single shot, the first team ever to do that in a final. Every ounce of them went into defending. Spain had planned the ending back when they picked the roster. Ferran Torres came off the bench just past the hour, the same as he had every match, and in minute 106 he was the freshest attacker on a field full of empty tanks. One swing, one goal, one trophy.

Baseball calls this the closer. Nobody calls the closer lazy for sitting through seven innings. The sitting is the job. The lesson travels past the pitch: rest is not what you do when the work is finished, it is capacity you are banking for minute 106. Be entirely out so you can be all in. The full piece is on the blog this week.

DARPI: the week in the retail data

Near-New Index 98.27, down 1.10 points week over week. Value Index 97.92. Volume Index (DARVI) 94.90. Both price and volume are contracting, so this is a genuine cooling, not a mix shift.

Retail is running 1.04 points under the wholesale baseline. That narrow, negative spread says dealer asking prices are staying disciplined against wholesale, not floating above it the way they did earlier in the cycle. Minivan is the fastest segment on the lot at 67-day median Days on Market. Full Pickup is the slowest at 117 days.

New this week: DARPI split the luxury segment into Luxury SUV and Luxury Sedan, and added model-and-year detail behind every segment move. Full interactive breakdown below. DARPI updates every Sunday.

For the desk this week

• Appraise 2023 Grand Cherokees, Explorers, and Traverses to the decline, not the segment average. Midsize SUV is down 6.32 points and those three are leading it.
• Large SUV is where the pressure is. Fullsize SUV is off 3.56, led by the 2023 to 2024 Tahoe and the 2024 Expedition.
• Hold your price on clean Altimas, Accords, Camrys, Corollas, and Sentras. Cars are the only thing rising.
• Price used EVs to today. Supply is up about 14 percent while price slips.
• Stock to turn: Minivan moves in 67 days, Full Pickup takes 117.

Reading the data better is not counter-consensus. It is just being ahead of the curve, and this Monday the curve is three layers under the number everyone quoted.