The McDonald's logo is pictured in front of a store in Dearborn, Michigan, on October 17, 2024 (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

Speaking Volumes

Trading activity in McDonald’s goes parabolic on E. coli outbreak

Here’s what sparked the most active trading days in the fast-food chain’s history.

Luke Kawa

10/23/24 3:52PM

Traffic at McDonald’s locations across America probably wasn’t too high today, what with the E. coli breakout and all. The same cannot be said for McDonald’s stock: its shares changed hands like crazy on their way to a 5.1% loss on the day.

Trading volumes totaled about 18.7 million shares, one of the 50 busiest days on record (based on data going back to July 1980). For context, that’s about 650% above its recent 20-day average volume — and nearly 3x the typical amount of burgers the fast-food chain sells per day (though maybe not today!).

Here’s a look at what was happening to cause volumes to go haywire on McDonald’s top 10 most active sessions.

#1,2,4: 10/5/06, 10/4/06, 10/3/06

These were the final sessions in which McDonald’s was spinning off its Chipotle stake by swapping those shares for its own, producing a burst of trading activity. The stock price move wasn’t big on any of these days, though, with a gain of 0.4% on Tuesday and an advance of 0.8% on Wednesday followed by a 0.5% drop on Thursday, the heaviest-volume session.

#3: 1/28/08

The stock tumbled 5.6% after reporting earnings during the early innings of the Great Recession. You want #5 with that?

#5: 1/4/11

Down 3% on not too much news beyond a giant block trade that went up in the premarket and set a negative (and busy) tone for the day.

#6: 12/17/02

Warned the market of its imminent first-ever quarterly loss, tied to the cost of closing restaurants and a value menu that backfired. Shares plummeted 8%.

#7: 7/23/09

The golden arches reported lower-than-anticipated quarterly sales, catalyzing a 4.6% retreat in the stock.

#8: 1/11/08

A survey of McDonald’s franchises suggested that same-store sales growth decelerated to its lowest level since 2003, sparking a 6.6% drop in the stock and portending the no-good, all-bad day that was #3 on this list.

#9: 10/10/08

We could attribute this to the prior day’s announcement from Venezuela that it was shuttering some locations temporarily because of concerns about sales-tax collections. But we’d be lying: this just happened to be one of the most dramatic days of the financial crisis for markets, a Friday in which a rout in Asian markets fed through to the US and fueled massive losses that were somewhat pared by the close.

#10: 08/08/08

888 is a lucky number in Chinese culture and an auspicious one for McDonald’s. It’s by far the biggest gainer on this list, with shares up 6.2% on the day after McD’s reported strong same-store sales for July.

Tasha Matsumoto

17m

Tech drags down stocks; gold and silver plummet

Gold and silver sank amid Trump’s plans to nominate reputed inflation hawk Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.

Public sculptures along the Clear Creek Trail in downtown Golden, Colorado.

Ben Walsh, Luke Kawa2h

Gold and silver plunge, suffering their worst losses since the 1980s

Gold and silver suffered their worst losses in decades on Friday, with the iShares Silver Trust falling more than 30% at one point during afternoon trading before recovering slightly.

After recently crossing $5,000 per ounce for the first time, gold's dip was relatively muted compared to silver's rout but nevertheless eye-watering for a traditional safe-haven asset. At one point, gold's intraday dip exceeded 10%, its worst intraday drop since the 1980s and surpassing its declines seen during the 2008 financial crisis, per Bloomberg.

Silver's drop was its worst in percentage terms since 1980.

Gold, and particularly silver, have been pushed higher recently by a storm of retail trader enthusiasm for the metals, as well as more traditional drivers of precious metals such as geopolitical risks and concerns over a fall in the dollar's value due to trade wars and possibly waning central bank independence.

Leveraged ETFs that hold gold and silver futures have become increasingly popular trading vehicles amid the parabolic moves in precious metals prices, and likely contributed to the magnitude of the unwind today.

Case in point: look at silver futures for delivery in March. That’s the dominant contract held by the ProShares Ultra Silver ETF, which offers exposure to 2x the daily move in the shiny metal. Volumes exploded (and the contract rebounded modestly) right around 1:25 p.m. ET, which is when silver futures settled and around the time the ETF performed its daily rebalancing (which in this case, involved massive selling).

Max Knoblauch5h

Gaming stocks plunge following release of Google’s AI tool that can create playable, copyrighted worlds

Shares of major gaming companies are plunging on Friday as investors get a deeper look at the capabilities of Google’s new generative-AI prototype, Project Genie.

The tool allows users to “create and explore infinitely diverse worlds” with a text or image prompt. Users have already exposed its ability to realistically recreate knockoffs of copyrighted games from Nintendo and other gaming companies.

As users experiment with recreations of game worlds like Take-Two’s “Grand Theft Auto 6,” shares of major gaming companies are sinking. Unity Software, the maker of the popular Unity game engine, is down over 25%, while gaming platform Roblox is down about 9%.

D-Wave Quantum CEO on what’s next after the most eventful month in the company’s history

“If 2025 was the international year of quantum, 2026 is the international year of D-Wave Quantum,” said CEO Dr. Alan Baratz.

Luke Kawa6h

Matt Phillips8h

SoFi bests Wall Street’s Q4 expectations, shares rise

SoFi Technologies reported better-than-expected Q4 sales and earnings-per-share numbers Friday before market open, sending the shares higher in the premarket.

The online lender reported:

Adjusted Q4 earnings per share of $0.13 vs. the $0.12 consensus estimate collected by FactSet.
Adjusted revenue of $1.01 billion in Q4 vs. the Wall Street forecast for $977.4 million.
Q1 2026 adjusted net revenue guidance of approximately $1.04 billion vs. the $1.04 billion consensus expectation, according to FactSet.

SoFi shares rallied roughly 70% last year, as the company’s growing menu of financial products — including trading, wealth management, mortgages, credit cards, and cryptocurrency trading — showed signs of gaining traction beyond its traditional base of student borrowers. But the stock has stumbled in early 2026, falling nearly 7% in January through Thursday’s close, though most of that slump seems to have been reversed this morning.