NEW YORK — Investors cheered moves by Google and credit-card companies on Wednesday and sent the stock market to a solid gain. Google helped set off a surge in technology stocks after it unveiled a low-cost wireless phone service.
For most of the day, the market looked like a driver given bad directions. Major indexes shuffled between slight gains and losses in morning trading before turning higher in the late afternoon. The gains were modest but shared widely: All 10 industries in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose.
McDonald’s said a strong dollar and restructuring charges weighed on its first-quarter results as a new CEO tries to turn the hamburger chain around. The company’s sales continued to fall in the quarter, but its earnings beat Wall Street’s estimates. McDonald’s gained $2.97, or 3 percent, to $97.84.
Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, called the market’s response to McDonald’s earnings typical of the earnings season so far.
“It was a pretty lousy report, but investors remain optimistic about the future,” Ablin said. “I think investors are willing to shrug off one bad quarter for earnings. We’ll see what happens if we get a string of disappointments.”
The S&P 500 index rose 10.67 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,107.96. That’s just 10 points shy of its record high reached on March 2.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 88.68 points, or 0.5 percent, to 18,038.27, and the Nasdaq composite picked up 21.07 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,035.17.
Visa and MasterCard surged after news that China plans to allow foreign companies to handle bank-card transactions. Visa’s stock jumped $2.66, or 4 percent, to $68.01, while MasterCard gained $3.43, also 4 percent, to $91.20.
Google’s new wireless service, Project Fi, costs around $20 a month for basic service and charges customers $10 per gigabyte of data they use.
Google’s stock gained $6.25, or 1 percent, to $549.18.
