McDonald's sales plunge as it Posts Seventh Straight Quarter of Falling U.S. Sales

The fast food giant reported a 10% drop in quarterly sales and earnings per share on Thursday. And while that was good enough to beat Wall Street's meager expectations, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook called the results "disappointing."

McDonald's has been struggling, and the troubles led to the ouster of former CEO Don Thompson in January.

Since taking over, Easterbrook has stressed that McDonald's must make big changes to convince people that they should eat at the Golden Arches.

Easterbrook unveiled the company's turnaround plan in May.

That announcement had a lot of marketing gobbledygook phrases like "modern progressive burger company." But it left many analysts wondering -- to borrow a famous old slogan from rival Wendy's (WEN) -- where's the beef?

Wall Street -- and customers -- wanted more details about how the company planned to spruce up the menu.

Easterbrook said in a statement Thursday that the company is "seeing early signs of momentum" and predicted a sales rebound in the third quarter. Thursday's results showed a decline in same-store sales of 0.7% worldwide and 2% in the United States.

But for McDonald's to get back on track, it all comes down to the food. And it seems that customers, especially Americans, are still not happy.

The company noted that a main reason for the tepid results was because "featured products and promotions did not achieve expected consumer response amid ongoing competitive activity."

Translation: The food stinks and consumers are going elsewhere.

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As we pretected in our article from today: War Started, Apple stock went crushing in what seems to be an awful day for the company. Apple stock has dropped by almost 8% and loosing tens of Billions from its worth.  

Another reason for Apple’s bad results, apart from the dispute with Samsung and other major tech companies was that it sold fewer iPhones than expected in the past three months, and offered a weak outlook for the current quarter.

The biggest technology rally since October was knocked cold, as disappointing earnings reports punished Microsoft Corp. and left Apple Inc. in danger of its worst-ever loss of market value.

Overall, Apple's sales and profits were strong. In its fiscal third quarter, Apple (AAPL, Tech30) recorded revenue of $49.6 billion. Financial analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected sales of $49.4 billion.

But the company sold "just" 47.5 million iPhones. While that's up a stunning 59% from a year ago, the number of iPhones sold last quarter is still fewer than the 49 million analysts had forecast.

There was plenty of good iPhone news for Apple to cheer about, though. 

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Materials like copper, aluminum, gold and oil are dropping in value, raising concerns about the health of the global economy.

The CRB raw industrials spot price index is now at its lowest level since November 2009. The Bloomberg Commodities Index touched levels unseen since June 2002.

Just this week, crude oil prices retreated to $50 a barrel, while gold tumbled below $1,100 an ounce to five-year lows.

And mining stocks like Newmont Mining (NEM), Barrick Gold (ABX) and Coeur Mining (CDE) are down 20% to 25% this month alone.

So why is this happening? David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds, said that "It's a yellow flag for the global economy. I don't think it's a heads up that we're headed for disaster, but I do think it tells us something."

There is simply isn't enough demand: Soft global economic growth has hurt demand for some of the most closely-watched industrial metals like copper and iron ore, as well as oil.

While China is growing faster than many countries, it has slowed drastically in recent years. That's a critical factor, because China's previously-insatiable demand for natural resources made it the world's "swing consumer."

China's slowdown is playing a huge role in the demand picture. Growth in the first half of 2015 slowed to the weakest level since 2009 -- and there's growing rumblings among investors that Beijing may be fudging the numbers.

Many other emerging markets like Brazil and Russia are growing at a sluggish pace, too. So are developed economies like Europe and to a lesser extent the U.S. The International Monetary Fund recently downgraded its global growth forecast to 3.3%, the weakest pace since the financial crisis.

"We're not going into a global recession, but there isn't a lot of growth out there either," said Michael Block, chief strategist at Rhino Trading Partners.

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