Art Cashin, director of floor operations at the NYSE, said it is a one-man band stock market rally with Visa's strength causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to outperform other major indexes.
Visa, which is the world's largest credit and debit card company, reported strong earnings and sales Wednesday amid improving consumer confidence. That pushed the stock up more than 10 percent in Thursday's trade.
The Dow differs from the and Nasdaq in that it is a price-weighted index; therefore, components with the highest prices have the greatest impact and vice versa. Visa is having such a large impact on the Dow because it has the greatest price of all the stocks by a far cry at $237 a share.
A better-than-expected first read on Q3 GDP gave S&P Futures a small pop before the opening bell. GDP increased 3.5 percent last quarter, above consensus of 3.1 percent; however, there was some weakness under the hood.
"A good chunk of it had to do more with government spending than with the U.S. consumer," noted Cashin. "That was not necessarily the area you wanted to go to."
Personal consumption, business investment and exports all slowed from the second quarter while government spending advanced, rising 10 percent.