Visa Inc. (V)

Visa vs. Mastercard He owns neither, though they have performed incredibly well. Don't buy them now in this part of the cycle. He likes American Express for its much-lower valuation, and have performed well, too, but buy that only on a big pullback.

He owns Mastercard instead. As the world grows, electronic transactions will continue to grow. His investment has more than doubled since 2018. He would hold your nose and buy either Visa or Mastercard. The fundamentals are great, but recognize it is quite expensive here. The key is to know when to sell and take profit.

or IPAY? This and Mastercard are both expensive, but there's a reason for that. They have wide, deep moats--hard to see how they can be displaced. Visa had pretty good though not fabulous earnings this week. They run a toll road on billions of transactions. If you wait for a dip, you could wait a long time.

A pure growth story. It's been a stellar performer for him. Though it trades at over 30x earnings and pays only a 0.56% yield, you buy this for growth in the coming years. Visa is also in a tech ETF in the U.S. which helps the stock. (Analysts’ price target is $184.84)

V vs. AXP vs. MA. Wouldn't touch Visa or Mastercard, because they're extremely expensive, unless they have a 50% pullback. But AXP is a whole lot cheaper on price to book. It's the only one with visible upside. But it's bang up against technical resistance at 3.5x book. Hasn't been able to get any further. Visa and Mastercard are a lot more profitable than AXP. AXP has more limited downside.

Paypal vs Visa? He likes fintech stocks. He likes both of PayPal and Visa, but would prefer to own the ETF IPAY-N. Visa is really leaning into the tokenization of the security behind a transaction. PayPal is going a little more direct to the mobile service. All good strategies -- hold the ETF to get good growth and less volatility.

Buy and hold or take profits? The payments world is changing. In China, you can't use your Visa or Mastercard, because they take Alibaba Pay instead, which costs retailer far less. He was surprised when he went to China last year. China uses mobile payments, not plastic. That said, Visa is incredibly well-positioned and performed so well. There's no reason that China will take on credit cards.

AmEx, Visa or Mastercard? They're all great. Visa and MA are pure-play payment processors vs. AmEx which is also the issuing bank. They play on electronic payments with people buying more and more online, but V and MA reaches a wider breadth of customers/users. AmEx still focuses on richer people. V and MA will always have a higher multiple because they're viewed as tech companies. They're all great holds for 5-10 years.