Washington: US stocks rose in afternoon trading on Wednesday as Visa`s potential expansion into China and talk of a turnaround at McDonald`s helped investors see the bright side of mixed quarterly earnings.
Visa gained as much as 7.1 percent to hit a record of $69.98, while MasterCard came shy of its all-time high, after China said it would open up its market to foreign firms for clearing domestic bank card transactions.
MasterCard was up 4.04 percent at $91.31.
A majority of the 10 major S&P 500 sectors rose, with the tech index gaining 0.96 percent on the back of Visa.
McDonald`s surged 3.12 percent to $97.86 after it said it was working on a plan to reverse its shrinking sales.
At 2:27 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average rose 80.57 points, or 0.45 percent, to 18,030.16, the S&P 500 gained 10.76 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,108.05 and the Nasdaq Composite added 21.52 points, or 0.43 percent, to 5,035.62.
A week ago, more than 80 percent of the S&P 500 companies to have posted their March-quarter earnings had beaten estimates. But with 121 reports now in, that number has slipped to 71.9 percent - just above the 70 percent earnings beat rate seen over the past four quarters. Many have blamed misses on revenue on a strong dollar for making their products more expensive overseas.
"People are seeing the negative effects of foreign exchange and that`s not been drastically worse than expected," said James Lowell, chief investment officer at Adviser Investments in Newton, Mass.
"They’re going back and looking at company fundamentals. Today you’re getting a bit of “glass is half full”.
Yum Brands jumped 4.33 percent after the restaurant operator said late on Tuesday it was recovering from a meat scare in China and expected a strong year-end finish.
Companies reporting results after the bell on Wednesday include AT&T , Facebook and eBay.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,734 to 1,204, for a 1.44-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,538 issues rose and 1,170 fell, for a 1.31-to-1 ratio favouring advancers.
The benchmark S&P 500 was posting 20 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 80 new highs and 27 new lows.
