Hot car list by Wall Street analyst spots three coldest models on the market

One of the key tasks of a Wall Street stock analyst watching the American auto industry is to sift through as much sales data as possible every day to find hidden patterns and proofs, like a ghost hunter in an old motel. One analyst crunched some numbers to come up with what he called the hottest-selling vehicles in the United States -- but his report turns out to be more accurate at spotting the three models with the worst performance this year.

As Business Insider noted, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas presents a graph in his report this week showing "model hotness" -- a measure that combines sales with changes in rebates and other incentives. If an automaker's boosting sales while cutting back on incentives, then a model is hot; if they're throwing money on the hood and still not luring buyers, then it's cooling off. In his most recent chart, Jonas named three models as hotter than any other: the Toyota Camry, the Mercedes M-Class sport utility vehicle and the Honda CR-V.