Recently, I've been getting too many emails and comments on my blog asking what I think of the Visa (NYSE: V) IPO. Listen, every single long-term investor should be interested in it. Until today, it's been one of the few remaining marquee companies around unavailable to our stock-obsessed society and aside from litigation risk, the company's got everything going for it.

It's got strong sales and transaction growth and more importantly, like rival MasterCard (NYSE: MA), it's immune to the current credit crunch, passing off cardholder debts to the banks. So, when others are sweating potentially catastrophic events like The Bear Stearns Companies Inc. (NYSE: BSC) and the potential collapse of other brokers like Lehman Brothers Holdings (NYSE: LEH), scaring everyone half to death, these guys are sitting pretty. This is also the main reason why MasterCard's stock has handily outperformed rivals American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), two companies -- and stocks -- that are certainly feeling that credit pain.

There'll be plenty of other articles dissecting the company, but I find that in rare situations like these, it's best to think in terms of the general picture. Not because it's the right way to invest, but because it's the way most people do. And those most people are the ones who can really influence the stock price here.

For the time being, forget about valuation comparisons to MasterCard. This is a case of supply and demand. There's plenty of supply, but there's also a ton of demand. MasterCard has turned out to be a Wall Street darling and this IPO has already priced high, so there's sure to be a spike at the open, but then what?

My guess is that if that spike is not too great, it'll perform somewhat like fellow recently-hot IPO VMware (NYSE: VMW) did for the first few months -- more than doubling until it was stung by extreme expectations and this bear market.

Since Visa is a much larger company and we are in fact in a bear market, those gains will surely be tempered somewhat. But woe be the short seller who tries to inject reason into this powder keg of an IPO.

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund