The first month of 2015 is in the books, and Black Book editorial director Ricky Beggs shared his reactions to last week’s vehicle price movements in the latest “Beggs on the Used Car Market” video report. 

Though pointing out that fuel prices continued to fall — by 2 cents and 7 cents for gas and diesel, respectively — Beggs said the most eyebrow-raising statistic in his weekly segment report, which reflected similar depreciation levels to last year, was this: 

“If there was one thing that caught my attention from the weekly segment report, it was that the overall average segment change was the greatest amount for the cars and trucks over the past three months,” Beggs said. “And in the trucks, today’s market at -$47 was very similar to the one year ago change of -$45. The cars at -$74 this past week is just under the -$86 change level of one year ago."

The decline does not end there: according to Beggs, eight out of the 10 car segments tracked show larger levels of decline than the week before. The only two segments that had any sort of gain — entry-level cars and upper midsize cars — gained only slightly, increasing by $1 each, on average.

Beggs was not sure if the changes in prices were driven by gas prices or “end-of-the-month” market action.

“Following the ‘end-of-the-month’ market thought, the trucks had 13 of the 14 reporting segments with the same or greater declining levels as compared to two weeks ago,” Beggs said. “The remaining segment, the full-size pickups, at only -$5, are the second best level of retention over the past few weeks, only behind the amazingly strong compact SUVs, which have had positive changes week over week for the past five weeks.”

The complete report can be viewed above.