There were size an beats and lots of whiffs. Even when a company did well as we saw with googles parent alphabet, sometimes the mark punished it because the company didnt do well enough. No matter how you cut it, it is all about the earnings this time of year. And today was no different. So lets start with the dow component mcdonalds. The fast food chain Beat Estimates for the third time in a row, posted its First Quarterly samestore sales rise in two years. The driver here, you guessed it, allday breakfast. Got to love that. Shares were up strongly early but then they faded into the close. Susan lee has more. Reporter mcdonalds is proving that less is more. Its latest Quarterly Report card beat Market Expectations of profit, sales and revenue. Whats working for the company . Well, a simpler menu with fewer items for customers to choose from, offerings of allday breakfast items like egg mcmuffins and hotcakes, 2 for 5, two of their main menu items for 5, helping boost samesource sales. All that helped drive profit in the first three months of the year to come in way ahead of estimates. We think allday breakfast is a gift that keeping on giving into sfen, the company trying to take this momentum they got from allday breakfast and get other thins in play, for instance, quality upgrades, the pick 2 platform, technology, loyalty, to extend this rally. Reporter new thinses mcdonalds is trying, all you can eat fries in some u. S. Locations. Also different sizings in big macs where you can get bigger big grabs called grand macs or smaller ones called mac juniors. This is a turnaround plan for the golden arches that started about a year ago after years of slumping sales and losing customers. Its Recovery Efforts under mcdonalds relatively new Ceo Steve Easterbrook who stepped into the top job in 2015. Internationally mcdonalds is being helped by improvements in key markets. China was a standout, sales increasing more than 7 after problems with suppliers in the country. Mcdonalds said it wants to make china its secondlargest market in the world after the united states. The Japan Business finally turning in a profit after a rough couple of years, losing money. At the end of march mcdonalds had more than 36,000 stores around the world and it aims to open 500 more this year. Theyre also returning a lot of money back to shareholders. 30 billion in the last three years. But even with the stellar Earnings Results mcdonalds executives say this is only the beginning in a turnaround plan to get back to the peak days of profitability for the company. Three companies that are also used as a proxy for the economy posted their latest results today. General electric, caterpillar, and honeywell. At ge, which is in the process of shedding assets from its ge capital unit, adjusted profit etched out expectations but there was concern its organic revenue fell. Caterpillar missed on the bottom line but its revenue beat forecasts. Honeywell results were better than expected. All those shares of all three finished to the downside. But as bob a. Sapisani tells us, it might t be the results that matter right now. Might be the tone. Reporter three big industrials reported today and theres a subtle but important change in the tone from cautious to mildly upbeat. General electric reaffirmed their full year guidance. Ceo jeff immelt blunt in calling the oil and gas business challenging but said the Aviation Business was seeing sustained strength and health care was rebounding and we were seeing improvements in our business in china overall concluding theres plenty of business out there to achieve our goals. Thats more positive than last quarter. Even companies that have had a tough time are modestly more optimistic. Caterpillar, it was not a good quarter, sales declines in all key businesses including construction and oil and gas, mining and rail. But. Ceo overhellman came on our air and said, overall i think were close to the bottom. For a company that has seen declining revenues since 2012, saying we are close to a bottom, thats a change in taupe. Honeywell, earnings up 9 year over year, thats good. Officials noted growth in the Key Aerospace category had accelerated in the current quarter. Why were the stocks do slightly today . Because the stocks have had a nice rally since the february bottom and theyre expensive right now. What does all this mean for the markets . Theres a change in tone, however modest, and thats good sign for earnings in the second half of the year and it credits the chances that we can end this earnings recession, this four consecutive quarters of earnings decline in the s p 500. For nightly Business Report im bob pisani at the new york stock exchange. What are the earnings telling us . Our guest concedes corporate profits have been a very mixed bag but thinks the worst of the earnings slump is passing. Karen cavenaugh is Senior Market strategist with Voya Investment management. Karen, good to have you with us. You say that Earnings Growth is actually going to be down year over year, but not as bad as the most dire forecast. Whats working . Thats correct. I dont think that we are going to get that negative growth that we were expecting. We still will have negative growth. Whats working is that things we were worried about have subsided. The dollar is getting weaker. Oil is going up. And the fed is remaining accommodative. Thats good news for stocks. In terms of sectors, karen, have there been surprises the financials have been a worry for a lot of people certainly. The big banks. Have there been surprises in different sectors that youve been impressed with . Well, energy financials, not good. However, the Consumer Discretionary sector is holding up very well and thats because we have a strong consumer. What do you see going into the next quarter, next two quarters here . Why do you say you think were turning a corner here, that the worst is going to be behind us . Because just as i said, we have already assimilated all of those bad things weve been bothering the market the last couple of quarters. Thats the strong dollar is hurting revenues overseas. The fact that we were worried about Interest Rates rising. The fact that oil was so low. Those things have kind of subsided. Now with an accommodative fed i thinkerings can really turn the corner. And we actually have seen sales growth is not really as bad as we were anticipating and its been a little bit better than in previous quarters. So that should lead to better enings as we go through the year. Weve been hearing that the individual investor was kind of scared off because everybody was talking about how bad this earnings season was going to be. Given what youve laid out, and indeed if it comes to pass i would argue that the individual investor who has a longerterm time horizon, who may have been sitting out part of this earnings season, might want to go in and take a look at some beatendown stocks. Absolutely. So we see that time and time again, when investors are getting out, thats probably when they should be getting in. At voya we advocate global diversification all the time. The market has gone up quite a bit since midfebruary. In the face of these profit declines. Do you think that the market has gotten ahead of the better earnings or priced in the better earnings that you see coming . No, not really. I think thats why weve been a little bit of ranged out. It goes forward, it goes back. Right now were not far from where we ended the year, up a little bit. But i think the mark is getting a little bit more mojo going, more enthusiastic. It hasnt gotten out of control because its being reined in by the earnings. Overall we dont have actual growth. We like the mojo. Being better than expected isnt actual growth. We will see that as we go through the year. Lets pray for the mojo. Karen cavenaugh with Voya Investment management. Turning to wall street, the dow managed to hang on to the 18,000 mark as many of those earnings weighed on stocks. In particular, microsoft which had its worst day in more than a year. In the end, the dow scratched out a 21point gain to close at 18,003. The nasdaq fell 39. The s p 500 barely budged. For the week only the nasdaq finished lower. President obama in london alongside Prime MinisterDavid Cameron urged british voters to stay in the european union. A referendum on whether to leave the eu takes place on 23 june. The president said its in britains best interests to remain in the group it joined more than 40 years ago. If right now ive got access to a massive market where i sell 44 of my exports . And now im thinking about leaving the organization that gives me access to tha . Thats not something id probably d president obama went on to say if britain left, there would eventually be a trade agreement between the countries but that britain would be at the back of the queue for a deal. Here at home, uber will pay 100 million to settle a pair of class action lawsuits in california and massachusetts which will keep its drivers classified as independent contractors, not employees. Identifying drivers as employees would have significantly raised its operating expenses. The company also agreed to have arbitration for drivers who have disputes and to communicate drivers ratings and cause if someone is terminated. Uber faces similar suits in several other states. China is the Worlds Largest auto market, one of the largest for uber. The beijing auto show gets under way and one thing that will be of major interest, selfdriving cars. Eunice yun takes us for a drive in a driverless car in beijing. Reporter with so many firsttime drivers in china, being something unusual on the road isnt uncommon. But nothing quite like this. Chinese carmakers testing out its new driverless car, the raeton, travel interesting the southwestern city of chongqing to the capital beijing. The 20,000 kilometer or 1,200 mile journey is the latest effort by a Chinese Company to outmaneuver google and other foreign rivals in selfdriving car technology. The car can do a lot, lot more. But theyre doing research. Googles approach need more time. Ours, theres a consumer for the vehicle fast. Reporter its one of the growing number of Chinese Companies joining the global race to design an autonomous auto. The partner of ford in china has created two models, one for cities and another that becomes selfdriving on the highway. For now both cars need a driver as a backup to navigate trickier traffic conditions. If the driver want to change lanes, either give a voice command or he can just use a signal. The vehicle will check the surrounding area. Reporter on this trip the vehicle switched labors, made threepoint turns on their own, and clocked speeds of 120 come tears an hour. Exercises to help engineers work out the kinks two of selling cars as early as 2018. The push for selfdriving cars is part of a broader state initiative for china to become a leader in i. T. The chinese governments kind of encourage Chinese Companies to invest more in product development, research. Its good for the company, good for our consumer, good for the country. Reporter good for the efforts to develop technology it sees as essential to pulling ahead in the global auto industry. For nightly Business Report, im eunice yun in beijing. Coming up, this weeks market monitor thinks security is where you need to look if you want some winners for your portfolio. He has three names hell tell you abou in whats sure to raise the ire of some in this highly charged election year, records show Federal Reserve governor leo brainard has reached her personal political contribution limit, 2,700. That has gone to democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The donations are within brainards rights but its bound to again raise questions about the feds independence. Eamon javers has been looking into this. We had to go back to 1990 to check the records here. In that span of time, we couldnt find a single other fed governor who made a contribution to a president ial candidate while sitting as a fed governor. A lot of them gave money before they joined the fed and after they left, but the tradition has been that while theyre a fed governor they dont give to president ial candidates. We did find a couple who gave to lowerlevel political canceled dates or to state political parties, that sort of thing. This one is raising eyebrows in washington. A lot of people interpreting it as an effort by brainard to curry favor with the Hillary Clinton camp and maybe angling for a job in the Clinton Administration if that happens come next year. We know whether see has been a longtime clinton supporter, number one . Number two, can you see circumstances under which this becomes a Major Political controversy that could potentially lead to her resignation . I dont think it becomes a major controversy at this point. Its well within her rights as a citizen of the united states. Youre entitled to give this campaign contribution, no rules at the fed prohibit it, so she didnt violate anything in doing this. But yes, she has a history with the clinton the bill Clinton Administration. She worked in the obama treasury department. And her husband is a state department official. So theres a clear connection here between brainard and the Democratic Party and the clintons in particular. But the tradition has been that the fed maintains its above politics, its not in that partisan system at all, the fed simply does technocratic fedtype things for nonpartisan reasons. And this, critics will say, erodes that just a little bit. It does come though at a time when the bernanke fed and also this fed, under ms. Yellen, has been much more open than fed governing bodies of the past. Yes, absolutely. In a way this is a victory for transparency. These contributions are in the federal Election Commission records, theyre there for anybody to see. Nobodys hiding anything here with this one. So there are those who support brainards position and say, if shes a democrat, why shouldnt she be a democrat and act like democrats do in washington . So thats the counter argument that, hey, at least nobodys hiding anything in all this. Thank you, have a great weekend, emoney javers. American area lines buying back 2 billion worth of shares. Market focus. The largest u. S. Airline by some measures said low fuel prices have helped profits grow but the company pointed out revenue was pressured by competition and softness in travel to and from latin america. Shares of the airline down 4. 5 on the day at 38. 21. Another ipo opened for trading today and its one of the first Tech Companies to do so in months. Secure works, the Cyber Security arm of dell, initially hoped to price its shares in the range of 15. 50 to 17. 50. But it ended up opening at just 14 a share. And after a somewhat volatile day thats exactly where its shares finished, 14 even. The consumer goods maker Kimberly Clark had a mixed First Quarter as the company saw profit rise and revenue fall. The firm also saw sales increasing in china one of its most competitive marks. But price cuts and promotions crimped profits there. U. S. Sales were up, shares of the company were down today over 3 to 126. 88. Auto dealer auto nation saw its profit fall 14 this past quarter as the company said consumer purchases of new cars has remained flat. Storm damage also took a toll on the companys profits as did an increase in pricing incentives. Shares of auto nation up 3 for the day to finish at 49. 49. Comerica feeling the heat from shareholders today as reports emerge that several major shareholders want that bank to consider a sale. Thats according to the wall street journal. The shareholders say the bank has not done enough to produce acceptable returns and that comerica must take action to fix its issues. This comes a few days after comerica released its earnings where it said energyrelated loans weighed heavily on the banks performance. Shares of comerica up 3 to 44. 02. Recent earthquakes in japan have hit home for general motors. That Company Announcing today that it is temporarily suspending production at four north american plants due to supply chain issues caused by that disaster. The company did note that the shutdown should not have any impact on its full year production. Shares of the automaker down more than 1 to 32. 18. And now to our market monitor this week. Who likes Cyber Security stocks . In the current climate he says theyre immune to the current cycle. Peter anderson, chief Investment Officer at Congress Wealth management. How much more than the rate of gdp growth do you think these companies can grow their business . Well, this is a very, very exciting sector. Mainly because we are all kind of fatigued about looking at energy, oil prices, Interest Rate hikes, the political situation. And when you look at Cyber Security stocks they seem to be immune from all that. And you can easily or i should say conservatively guess that the growth rate should be at least multiples of gdp, say, three, four, five times. Im setting that as a fairly conservative guideline. I really do feel much more optimistic about the industry in general, given the continuous Cyber Threats we are going to get. And its only going to look worse and worse. Its not going away, certainly. Bruise Allen Hamilton is your first pick for us, why . Thats kind of a misunderstood compan