10 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Buy Right Now

10 Best Blue Chip Stocks To Buy Right Now: McDonald's Corporation(MCD)

McDonald?s Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a worldwide foodservice retailer. It franchises and operates McDonald?s restaurants that offer various food items, soft drinks, coffee, and other beverages. As of December 31, 2009, the company operated 32,478 restaurants in 117 countries, of which 26,216 were operated by franchisees; and 6,262 were operated by the company. McDonald?s Corporation was founded in 1948 and is based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Paul Ausick]

  McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD) traded up 1.02% today at $97.14. The company said it would offer free coffee at breakfast time for a two-week period beginning next Monday. Investors apparently like the idea that the company is responding to new competitive breakfast offerings. The 52-week range for the stock is $92.22 to $103.70. Trading volume for the shares was about 25% below the daily average of around 5.3 million shares traded.

• [By Bloomberg Businessweek]

  Alamy McDonald's (MCD) may recently have struggled to lure customers, but it still does far more business at each location than rival burger chains. The average McDonald's restaurant in the U.S. drew $2.6 million in revenue last year. Average sales for No. 2 chain Burger King (BKW): $1.2 million, according to data from its largest franchisee, Carrols Restaurant Group (TAST). What accounts for this more-than-a-million gap? "Everything from marketing and site selection to product initiatives and franchisee selection have been historical factors," said Nick Setyan, vice president in charge of equity research at Wedbush Securities, in an email. Here are four factors that drive higher sales volumes at McDonald's: 1. McDonald's gets more customers during off-peak hours. Look no further than the strength of its breakfast! business relative that of Burger King, says Darren Tristano, executive vice president at restaurant consultancy Technomic. Egg McMuffin is part of the fast-food vocabulary in a way Burger King can't match. And beverage and snack offerings such as McCafe and wraps have helped increase McDonald's sales between meals. The dramatic impact from off-peak business explains why chains such as Taco Bell (YUM) are entering the battle for morning customers, while others such as Starbucks (SBUX) are seeking more afternoon and evening business. 2. The power of the Happy Meal. McDonald's has the largest share of kids meal sales in the fast-food industry and gets about 10 percent of total sales from Happy Meals, the most commonly advertised child-oriented fast-food item on television. Burger King, meanwhile, is still trying to win back "parties with kids and seniors and women," said Josh Kobza, Burger King's chief financial officer, at a conference last year. One way to do that: "We got rid of the creepy king character that tended to scare away women and children." 3. McDonald's has an edge on efficiency. Despite recent operational challenges at McDonald's,

• [By Rick Aristotle Munarriz]

  Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images From a new player in the fast food market cleverly attacking the leader's mascot to a social giant bringing out its inner shutterbug, here's a rundown of the week's smartest moves and biggest blunders in the business world. Twitter (TWTR) -- Winner There are limitations inherent with Twitter, and the 140-character cutoff is just scratching the surface. Twitter's had its monetization challenges because it's not as interactive with multimedia, but that's taking a step in the right direction this week with the hashtag hasher sprucing up its offerings for shutterbugs. Twitter will now allow Twitter users to tag fellow users in photographs. Twitter will also let someone include as many as four photographs in a single post. We live in visual times, and while Vine and Twitter's origin! al photo ! platform are decent, it's great to see the dot-com darling take things up a notch. King Digital Entertainment (KING) -- Loser There are tens of millions of Candy Crush Saga players on any given day, but apparently most of them would rather be matching candy pieces than buying into the game's developer. Game creator King Digital Entertainment went public at $22.50 on Wednesday, and unlike many of the dot-com darlings that have pulled off blazing IPOs, the market spat the Candy Crush maker out. The stock opened lower and closed its first day of trading down 16 percent, at $19. It was easy to see this coming. Many key performance metrics had peaked at King during last year's third quarter. Oculus -- Winner Few figured that Facebook (FB) would rush into any big-ticket purchases after its $19 billion deal for Whatsapp, but then the social networking leader announced the purchase of Oculus for $2 billion. Oculus is a virtual reality headwear maker that started drawing attention as a Kickstarter campaign. Critics have pointed out that the backers of that crowdfunding campaign that raised $2.5 million on Kickstarter will get nothing out of this deal.

• [By John Divine]

  McDonald's (NYSE: MCD  ) couldn't help the Dow much on Thursday, adding just 0.3%. Not much changes from day-to-day with McDonald's, whose golden arches are one of the most recognizable brand symbols in the world. But for blue chip companies like Mickey D's to maintain their dominance, they've got to fend off competition, and embrace innovation and change in the industry. McDonald's isn't doing a great job at either of these. Yum! Brands' Taco Bell is now using real people named Ronald McDonald to endorse the taco haven's new breakfast menu. And McDonald's has been slow to embrace smartphone payment technology, as well, even as its rivals rush to develop apps for their consumers.

source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/10-best-b! lue-chip-! stocks-to-buy-right-now.html