Topic: Growth Stocks

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, December 17, 2010

Article Excerpt

PLEASE NOTE: This is our last Hotline for 2010. Our next Hotline will go out on Friday, January 7, 2011. VISA INC., $66.90, New York symbol V, fell 16% this week. That’s because the Federal Reserve proposed new limits on fees banks can charge for debit-card transactions. Companies that process these transactions, such as Visa and MasterCard Inc. (New York symbol MA), charge banks a percentage of the transaction’s cost. Right now, the average debit-card fee is 1.14%, or $0.44 per transaction. The Federal Reserve, acting under new legislation to regulate financial companies following the 2008 credit crisis, proposes to cap these fees at $0.12 per transaction. The proposals could also make it easier for new competitors to process transactions. Visa now gets about 20% of its revenue from debit transactions in the U.S. Debits probably supply a much lower proportion of its earnings, but Visa doesn’t release that figure. Its earnings and growth prospects would still suffer if the Federal…