Most of the rest of the U.S. thinks the layoffs that have hit the tech sector are because they overextended and made poor decisions during the stimulus-fueled boom. That may be true, but a falling tide grounds all boats. We'll see some big names in the economy do mass layoffs this summer - that's the whole point of the Fed's actions.
My marker for when it's time to re-enter the stock market is when an S&P 500 company goes bankrupt.
Bankrupt? Better to look for companies where leadership runs counter to "prevailing conventional wisdom" and actually leads for others to follow.
They reversed the downward trend in revenue (which occurred simultaneously with a tremendous increase in profitability) and bounced back from 2020 magnificently.
Their stock price has ONLY roughly doubled in the last five years and their dividend has ONLY doubled in the last 10.
Obviously that is not good enough so they're going to lay off a couple thousand people to get that margin up by two points.
Pathetic.
This is 100% a stock juicing play. I'm willing to bet there's a cadre of executives who all came on at the same time pre-pandemic (during the revenue turnaround) whose options are maturing and the price isn't where they want it to be because of the pandemic. McDonalds is as healthy a company as its food is unhealthy.
It's obviously not illegal. But the more the (consumer) market knows, the better its decisions on where to open their wallets.
In the Bay Area I can get 2x breakfast sandwiches and a large iced coffee for $6.29, taxes included, which is pretty damn cheap. Their Big Macs are regularly 2-for-1 in their app, and accumulate rewards.
I dislike the trend of harvesting all this data using apps, but I also don't really get fast food unless pressed for time.
You’re referring to just offers and rewards right, not an across-the-board special set of app prices?
McDonald's had cheap, fast, and good "quality." Now it is no longer cheap, it is no longer fast, and expecting a burger properly put together will only set you up for disappointment.
We rarely eat fast-casual nowadays despite being voracious consumers when we were in our early 30s. Our kids don't eat it (so we need to cook separate meals for them), and there's less infrastructure built up around making sure parents never need to go into the restaurant.
I feel like McDonald's has always served the families-with-small-kids demographic - it started in the baby boom and then massively expanded as the baby boomers were themselves having kids. To the extent that the fast food industry is seeing its customer base decline, it's probably because fewer people are having kids. It's likely that childless couples didn't eat at McDonalds in the 80s and 90s either, but being kids then, our only experience tended to be with other families that had kids.
The state of your average McDonalds site has extremely little to do with the corporation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/20/mcdonalds-big-mac-prices-sta...
I think most people here grew up with the idea that McDonald's is cheap junk food, but I grew up in a country where it was not, and so my expectations are different.
Many American chain restaurants are commoditized in America, but are not elsewhere.
Also, if you're familiar with race conditions, you can double use promos.
There were consecutive months this summer where I could get a Spicy McCrispy (Big Mac pricing), a large fry, and any size soft drink for $2.14 with tax, across two transactions 15 minutes apart... every. Single. Day. Or I could get exactly what I might’ve wanted - including a shake - for about $13 and change.
If you want a good deal, you, “play the game.” You can order from a Domino’s and pay $50-60 for two pizzas delivered. Or you use the in-app coupons, pick it up yourself and pay $16.
For $13+ I’d rather cook real food at home for that money. For $2.14? Yeah, I’m up for that.
That's part of it. The other is there are categories of American white collar work which have always been bullshit jobs, it's just now okay to eliminate them.
Many companies (mostly tech) increased hiring of all kinds, bullshit or not, during the last years. Those are the excess jobs. Reversing them is the short-term correction. For much longer, corporate America has been staffing up departments which practically do nothing. Eliminating them is the longer-term trend.
No, it doesn't, because one of these things pre-dates and was not caused by low rates. (Office Space was released when rates were half a point above where they are now [1].)
[1] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-...
More like the biggest piece of shit on the water is first to sink in the storm.
Tech was that POS. But other sectors are gonna feel the storm too. But they'll probably do better because smaller proportions of those industries are running on VC monopoly bucks that go tits up when the fed raises rates.