The Hamburger Economy: McDonald’s Seven Year High

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Stocks:  (MCD)(SBUX)(F)(TOL)

McDonald’s stock hit a seven year high of $43. JP Morgan credits the company with turning around its operations in Europe and having strong-same store sales in the US. For a company with over $20 million in annual sales, the growth rate is impressive.

While car sales down and durable goods orders dropping at a rate not seen in six years, hamburgers and coffee are flying off the shelves. Ford may trade at $8, down from almost $15 two years ago, but McDonald’s has gone from $31 to its current high over that period. And, Starbucks has moved from $29 to $37. That means that the increase in the price of McDonald’s stock has even outpaced the coffee guys.

The inexpensive stuff is selling. Housing firms like Toll Brothers may be experiencing sharp drops in their stock prices because they can’t sell new homes, but at least can eat cheap.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he write about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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