I’ve done it.  I’ve gone and made my next stock investment.  But it didn’t go down like I thought it would.  I had been waiting for the stock to take a dip, and during that time, I learned a bit more about a company that is as close to an identical twin as you can have in 2 publicly traded companies.  And I bought that one instead.  The stock that I had been waiting to get in on was Visa(symbol: V).  I had wanted to get in since the beginning, but just didn’t have any available funds.  I finally made some IRA contributions and had enough in the account to make a worthwhile purchase.  But in the time it took me to get that money saved up, Visa had gone from the mid 60s to the low 80s.  

Many people think that Visa will follow in the footsteps of Mastercard(symbol: MA). Looking at this 1 year chart:

We can see that Mastercard has gone on a hell of a ride. Up $158 bucks, and $125%.  That’s good work if you can get it.  Visa hasn’t been on the market for nearly as long, but its run up to the low $80s in just about a month and a half, it’s earned a market cap of $69B.  Thats billion with a B.   And that is what caught my attention over the past few days,  that and 1 other thing.

The two reasons I decided to buy Mastercard over Visa are Growth and Growth.  Even with its tremendous run, Mastercard has a market cap of $37B.  It can almost double again, and still be just about the size of Visa.  More room to grow, means more room for stock gains.  Secondly, Mastercard has much more international exposure than Visa.  With soon-to-be huge emerging markets, like China and India going digital on their financial transactions, Mastercard stands to benefit.  And when yet-to-emerge emerging markets like Africa and South America get up to speed, Mastercard is already there and waiting.  

Time will only tell if I made the right decision to go with Mastercard instead of Visa, but honestly, I think both stocks will perform well over the next few years, and continuing on through my retirement.