McDonald’s and Press Release Events
Abstract
McDonald’s is an American institution. Their income and stock performance reflects the performance of the overall United States equity market. As a result, conclusions about performance market deviations are easier to make. When McDonald’s has a large one-day move in returns and the market does not, we can conclude an activity of McDonald’s has caused the performance change. We compare the top 20 one-day returns (gains), the bottom one-day returns (losses) with the issuing of non-financial press releases. During the five-year period of February 6, 2013 through February 6, 2018, there were 79 different non-financial press releases. The press releases were then coded into one of four categories: “Charity”, “Marketing”, “New Country” and “Staff.” We found 19 (24%) of the press releases resulted in either a top 20 one-day gain or a bottom one- day loss within one month of the issuance of the press release.