Are You Bullish or Bearish on Toyota Stock?

(Toyota recall article updated with additional analysis of Toyota Motors recall and updated stock prices.)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Toyota's(TM) president Akio Toyoda -- who is also the grandson of the company's founder -- ended an exhausting week in tears. And the market seemed pleased bythat.

After a harrowing week of being grilled and probed by lawmakers in Washington, Toyota execs watched company stock rise 2% over the week to end Friday's trading session at $74.80. (Monday morning was a different story, with the stock slipping 1.6% to close at $73.64.)

The stock had also shot up 4.2% last Wednesday, the day of president Akio Toyoda's testimony, even though he expressed doubt on CNN's Larry King Live over how well his sincerity was conveyed.

For many, it seemed sincere enough. Toyota's media-shy president on Wednesday broke down in tears as he spoke in front of dealers at the National Press Club after the testimony.

"At the hearing, I was not alone. You and your colleagues, across America, around the world, were there with me," he told them. They responded with applause, as shown in a video on CNN.com.

During the last week of February, Toyoda; James Lentz, president of Toyota U.S. Sales; and Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota North America, were grilled by lawmakers in Washington over its recall of more than 8.5 million vehicles, due to sudden acceleration concerns.

Questions over whether the company had been hiding the true cause of the recalls were especially heated; while the automaker said that sticky accelerators and problematic floor mats caused the unintended accelerations, lawmakers suspect that the real issue lies with the vehicles' electronic throttle control systems, which would be much more troublesome and expensive to fix.

Lawmakers also took the opportunity to chastise Toyota executives for apparently saving massive quantities of money by negotiating recall limits and auto safety rules with government regulators -- earlier uncovered in an internal company document.