McDonald's Corporation (MCD) price prediction

Bull, base and bear price targets

Bull case (probability 20%): target $530.94, implied return +87.1%. Base case (probability 60%): target $423.76, implied return +49.4%. Bear case (probability 20%): target $316.97, implied return +11.7%.

These are not points-on-a-chart guesses. Each scenario is built from explicit revenue, margin, and capital-allocation assumptions, and discounted at 6.33%. Probability weights are calibrated to McDonald's Corporation's mature compounder archetype — the bull tail is fatter for hyper-growth names, thinner for mature compounders, and inverted for cyclicals near peak.

Probability-weighted expected return

Folding bull/base/bear into a single weighted view, MCD's probability-weighted price target is $423.84 and the weighted return is +49.4%. The asymmetry signal — the gap between weighted return and base-case return — is Probability-weighted scenario value points to favorable asymmetry versus the current price across the bear, base, and bull paths..

Asymmetry matters more than the headline return. A 10% expected return with a 30%-bear/15%-bull dispersion is a different bet than a 10% expected return with a 10%-bear/12%-bull dispersion. The full report walks through both for MCD.

What our forecast deliberately does not do

We do not publish twelve monthly price targets across a calendar year, we do not back-test indicators on past prices, and we do not anchor any number to "analyst consensus" — the consensus is a useful sanity check, not a target. If our composite fair value differs from the analyst consensus by more than 30%, the full report runs a consensus-divergence diagnostic instead of silently revising toward the crowd.

What we do publish: the 5×5 Ke-versus-terminal-growth sensitivity matrix, five formal stress tests with quantified fair-value impact, an earnings decision tree if reporting is within 60 days, and explicit position-management checkpoints. Together those answer "what if my view is wrong?" — a more useful question for an investor than "what's the price next month?".

How to use this for MCD

Anchor on the fair-value range ($317–$531), size against the bull/base/bear distribution, and define a kill-scenario list before entry. Our current rating for MCD is Strong Buy; rating-band changes are the trigger for re-sizing, not for trading the noise around them.

For the canonical version of this answer — including the sensitivity matrix, scorecard, and full assumption ledger — see the full report at /stocks/mcd/analysis.

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