McDonald's scheduled an investor day. The U.S. business disappointed last quarter. Four things are expected to happen at this meeting.
Let me translate that for you. The company that sells hamburgers for a living needs to gather its shareholders in a room and explain why Americans stopped buying hamburgers. This is the financial equivalent of a priest calling a meeting to discuss why people stopped believing in God. The answer is right there. You're charging eight dollars for a Big Mac.
But no. McDonald's will not address pricing. They'll unveil a digital transformation strategy. They'll discuss supply chain optimization. They'll present a slide deck about customer engagement metrics and brand positioning in emerging markets. What they will not do is admit that their core product tastes like it was assembled by someone who hates food and the people who eat it.
Investors will nod along. They'll ask about same-store sales growth and franchise royalty streams. Someone will bring up the McFlurry machine situation. Everyone will pretend this is a solvable problem that requires sophisticated analysis rather than the obvious solution of lowering prices or improving quality or both.
Meanwhile some 19-year-old with a Robinhood account just bought MCD calls because he saw the golden arches while driving to his shift at Wendy's and thought that counts as research. He's about to learn that investor day presentations have the same impact on stock price as a nun has on the NFL draft. Which is to say none whatsoever.
The stock will move based on whether Jerome Powell coughs during his next press conference or because a computer in New Jersey decided it was time to sell everything that starts with the letter M. The investor day could reveal that Ronald McDonald is actually three kids in a trench coat and it wouldn't matter.
Your technical levels don't care that the McRib is back.
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