Dow Jones (DJIA) Today: McDonald's (MCD) Higher

The Dow component leading the way higher looks to be McDonald's (NYSE:MCD), which is sporting a $1.70 gain (+1.7%) bringing the stock to $100.60.

By Naomi Hossain , Mar 2, 2015 11:00 AM EST

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ( ^DJI) is trading up 121 points (+0.7%) at 18,253 as of Monday, Mar 2, 2015, 10:36 a.m. ET. During this time, 77.1 million shares of the 30 Dow components have changed hands vs. an average daily trading volume of 372.3 million. The NYSE advances/declines ratio sits at 1,827 issues advancing vs. 1,113 declining with 177 unchanged.

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The Dow component leading the way higher looks to be

McDonald's

(NYSE:

MCD

), which is sporting a $1.70 gain (+1.7%) bringing the stock to $100.60. This single gain is lifting the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 12.87 points or roughly accounting for 10.6% of the Dow's overall gain. Volume for McDonald's currently sits at 4.1 million shares traded vs. an average daily trading volume of 7.6 million shares. McDonald's has a market cap of $95.64 billion and is part of the services sector and leisure industry. Shares are up 5.5% year-to-date as of Friday's close. The stock's dividend yield sits at 3.4%. McDonald's Corporation franchises and operates McDonald's restaurants in the United States, Europe, the Asia/Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Canada, and Latin America. The company's restaurants offer various food items, soft drinks, coffee, and other beverages, as well as breakfast menus. TheStreet Ratings rates McDonald's as a

buy

. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its notable return on equity, expanding profit margins, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and increase in stock price during the past year. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.