The market is marking time, but the bias is still to the upside. The lack of economic data has slowed the action but yesterday's momentum carried over into today. Most eyes are on vehicle sales and the changing of the guard. Ford sold more cars last month than General Motors for the first time since 1998. But the folks at General Motors aren't crying in their beer, on the contrary our auto analyst thinks the company was the big winner today. David Silver will go into more details below. I will say that GM is positioned to take advantage of a hostile environment for Toyota (TM) and maybe other foreign automakers, too. There is a disingenuous aspect to all of it from the grilling of Toyota executives to the lack of outrage at today's announcement of 1.3 million GM cars recalled. Today is all about the whips...the kind you drive and the kind used to flog the competition.

Interestingly, Ford (F) shares are spinning their wheels while Toyota is moving higher.

The action in crude oil is compelling. I don't think that it's up over news or scuttlebutt involving Iran, but this move looks determined. Keep in mind if conventional wisdom becomes so sanguine then it stands to reason that crude oil will move higher, too. Let's keep an eye on this.

February Auto Sales Begin With a Flurry
By: David Silver, Research Analyst

So far General Motors and Ford have reported auto sales for February and in my mind, the biggest winner has been General Motors. It announced this morning a 1.3 million vehicle recall but that shouldn't spoil the party for a great month. The company reported that sales during the month improved 11.5% year over year, but that includes Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, and Saab, which in total sold only 3,102 units compared to 22,303 units sold in February of 2009. Only looking at the core four brands of Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC, sales improved 32.2% year over year as the concentrated marketing spend as well as new releases are beginning to pay dividends for the company.

Ford, on the other hand, had another great month, and including Volvo, sales actually surpassed that of General Motors for the first time 1998. Stripping out Volvo sales (Ford sold Volvo to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and the deal is expected to close in the second quarter), sales were just below that of GM's (core 4). Ford reported that its market share gained three percentage points compared to last year and achieved a 17% share of the U.S. market, no doubt a good portion of that coming from Toyota.

Sales from GM came in just below our expectations, while Ford blew away what we had forecasted for the month. We had expected the snowstorms that impacted much of the United States to have a more dramatic impact on sales. The numbers are beginning to trickle in, and there is always going to be an asterisk next to this month's results as a result of the blizzards, "snow'icanes", and Toyota recalls. Toyota announced its marketing and incentive blitz this morning for the month of March; we had expected the incentives to wait a few months to let the negative news die down. However, CEO Akio Toyoda has been around the world and after a black eye from Congress, he got a much warmer reception in China, where he again apologized for the massive recalls as well as the problems that his vehicles have caused.

Deeper Dive into the Retail Minutiae
By: Brian Sozzi, Research Analyst

This Thursday, the retail sector will announce its February sales results. You are likely to see comparable store sales misses relative to consensus estimates, and perhaps earnings warnings, by those companies overly concentrated on the East Coast. I have supplied some minutiae to ponder in advance of the results.

Some things I am seeing in the estimates:

* Of the 17 companies I gathered data for, 29% have had their comparable store sales estimates for the month lowered. The remaining companies have had upward revisions or were maintained.
* There were fairly sizable comparable store sales estimate raises for Limited (LTD) and TJ Maxx (TJX). I believe these raises have merit as Limited is benefiting from a stronger internal product cycle and TJ Maxx has clear momentum in its business to start the new reporting year.
* I think that Kohl's (KSS) and Zumiez (ZUMZ) could disappoint on sales. For Kohl's, it had strong exposure to the storms on the East Coast and Midwest and high consensus expectations. For Zumiez, its estimates have gone unchanged for the month, despite the store selling beach wares in this type of inclement weather. The West Coast is important to them, however, but I still don't sense numbers there will be robust.