Today, with the announcement of Visa's expansion into China, investors figured out that there are certain advantages to being a multinational corporation despite the strong dollar.  (Don't people know that there are always two sides to every coin and that it is never a good idea to place all your bets only on the dark side of the moon?)  This combined with McDonald's new proposal for its turnaround sent the Dow up 88 points and the Nasdaq up to just 13 points shy of its all time record that preceded the dot.com bubble in 2000.  So this so-called "mixed earnings" season suddenly didn't look so bad today, even though in my opinion the "mixed earnings" moniker is still misplaced given the fact that 72% of 121 S&P 500 companies have thus far beaten estimates, which is higher than it's been in the last four quarters.  So why these are being called mixed results is somewhat of a mystery to me, but so is market psychology as a whole.  Tomorrow's the big day when a lot more Q1 reports are due in.  Volume was just about average at 6 billion.

Markets | Wed Apr 22, 2015 5:09pm EDT

Stocks end stronger as investors look beyond mixed earnings

BY NOEL RANDEWICH

DJ:       18,038.27  +88.68       NAS:      5,035.17  +21.07       S&P:      2,107.96  +10.67

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks ended stronger on Wednesday as Visa's potential expansion into China and talk of a turnaround at McDonald's helped investors look beyond a mixed bag of quarterly earnings.

All of the 10 major S&P 500 sectors rose, with the tech index gaining 1.09 percent, propelled by Visa and MasterCard.

Visa ended 4.07 percent higher at $68.01 after hitting a record high of $69.98, while MasterCard closed up 3.91 percent after China said it would open up its market to foreign firms for clearing domestic bank card transactions.

McDonald's surged 3.13 percent after it said it was working on a plan to reverse its shrinking sales.

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.

"We’re sorting through earnings. It’s mixed, but there’s no drastic change to the general economic recovery.” said Michael Sansoterra, portfolio manager of the RidgeWorth Large Cap Growth Fund in Atlanta.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 88.68 points, or 0.49 percent, to end at 18,038.27. The S&P 500 gained 10.67 points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,107.96 and the Nasdaq Composite added 21.07 points, or 0.42 percent, to 5,035.17.

The Nasdaq Composite is now just 13 points shy of its record high close, set in March 2000, that signaled the limit of the dot-com bubble. By October 2001, 70 percent of its value had evaporated.

"I do think there are valuation concerns, and some tech companies are trading at extremely high multiples," said Derek Hoyt, chief investment officer at Minneapolis-based KDV Wealth Management. "People need to be cautious about what they buy, but I don’t think the situation calls for a 70 percent decline."

Major tech earnings on tap for Thursday include Amazon.com , which trades at over 400 times earnings, as well as Microsoft and Google .

Yum Brands ended 3.95 percent higher after the restaurant operator said late on Tuesday it was recovering from a meat scare in China and expected a strong year-end finish.

After the bell, eBay was up 5 percent after it posted March-quarter earnings above estimates and said its growth was hurt by the strong dollar. Facebook Inc posted its slowest growth in quarterly revenue in two years and its stock fell 2.1 percent in extended trade.

On Wednesday, advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,737 to 1,230, for a 1.41-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,483 issues rose and 1,267 fell for a 1.17-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 22 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 94 new highs and 33 new lows.

About 6.0 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 6.2 billion daily average for the month to date, according to BATS Global Markets.