Look beyond banks for Finance stocks

Article Excerpt

Bank stocks tend to account for the bulk of most investors’ Finance-sector holdings. Banks are writing down fewer loans as the economy recovers and borrowers pay back their loans, but demand for new mortgages and other loans remains weak. To diversify your Finance holdings, we recommend investing in non-bank financial-services companies, such as these six. We have a high opinion of all of them, but not all are buys right now. VISA INC. $78 (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 830.1 million; Market cap: $64.7 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 7.5; Dividend yield: 0.8%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest retail electronic-payments network. The company processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. The stock fell to $67 in December 2010 after the U.S. Federal Reserve proposed new limits on fees banks can charge for debit-card transactions. Visa gets about 20% of its revenue from debit-card transactions in the…