McDonald's and Kraft Foods

Continuing this week's "Consumer Foodstuffs" topic, we are presenting McDonald's (MCD) and Kraft Foods (KFT). McDonald's, the well known fast food franchise spread across the world was established in 1933; that is almost eighty years of McDonald's! The current Chief Executive is Donald Thompson. The stock price this Sunday was $91.75 and is now at $90.93. Looking at lifetime statistics for the company, their shares have increased value since incorporation until present, except for a brief period between 2000 and 2003. On September 20th/21st, McDonald's annouced its quarterly cash had increased by 15%, leading to almost a point increase on the market. Just a week later, on September 27th, the company was downgraded from a 'buy' to a 'neutral' status, and we thus concluded it was too unstable to currently invest. In our simulated investments, we did lose nearly $12 on ten shares, which we purchased at $92.11. Considering this was only with ten shares, greater shareholders lost significantly more money in just two days.
Our other highlight company of the day this week is Kraft Foods (KFT). This convenience food company was established in 2000 and is currently led by CEO Irene Rosenfeld. The stock price on Sunday marked $41.35. We bought ten shares on Monday at $41.08, and by today made almost $7. Unfortunately, the company has not made much growth since incorporation, especially in a very kinetic time frame, for the better and worse, from 2003 to 2009. On more recent terms, KFT stocks have been changing drastically with each turn of events. September 6th, Kraft Foods announced its future split into Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez, scheduled for October 1st, which quickly led to a point-and-a-half drop in share price. The split yesterday, despite our expectations, actually gained us a profit. We do somewhat speculate inconsistencies with the stocks as the week progresses, and as the public and investors gain more knowledge concerning Kraft's split.

Thank you for reading, and keep visiting the blog daily/weekly for our analyses!! More to come this week: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Kellogg, Boston Beer, and many more!