Can Autotrader shares correct a dangerous skid lower?
Losing over a third of its value in just three months, independent analyst Alistair Strang looks for signs of support.
4th February 2026 07:54
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
The car dealing site, Autotrader Group (LSE:AUTO), is experiencing disappointing share price movements, blamed on the company's adoption of AI.
However, Autotrader managed to introduce an obligatory service for their advertisers, allowing website users to "reserve" vehicles, and thus effectively removing them from sale.
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This act provoked a backlash from advertisers who were keen to remind Autotrader of the fact alternatives to their service exists, such as Motors.co.uk.
Motor traders were far from happy and Autotrader recently did the extremely unusual thing of apologising for their innovation, somehow contriving to blame AI and thus joining a few other companies experiencing a bit of a meltdown.
The immediate situation with Autotrader is pretty grim, suggesting ongoing weakness below 498p shall promote ongoing reversals to an initial 418p with our secondary, if broken, a fairly damaging 274p. This would indicate a return to share price levels not seen since their launch back in 2015.
There is very little positive to be said about recent price movements, other than to suggest the share needs currently to close a session above 546p to perhaps trigger recovery to an initial 638p with our secondary, if beaten, at 684p.
Whether it is indeed AI or just a stupid corporate "good idea" which got out of control, the future certainly looks messy.
Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Alistair Strang has led high-profile and "top secret" software projects since the late 1970s and won the original John Logie Baird Award for inventors and innovators. After the financial crash, he wanted to know "how it worked" with a view to mimicking existing trading formulas and predicting what was coming next. His results speak for themselves as he continually refines the methodology.
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