Visa, Inc. (V) saw a nice pop today during the afternoon session. With a little less than two hours to go before the end of market activities, the shares were higher by well over 7%. They hit a price of $83, and the volume level was healthy.

It was great to witness the buying activity. While I don't own Visa, I do recognize its great potential over the long term. The company makes money on transactions at points of sale: just a small percentage on each one, of course, but considering how society has become dependent on both credit and debit cards, you've got to respect the model. Remember that Visa doesn't expose itself to too much risk: it's the banks who make the actual credit loans.

How many days can we have where the plus or minus signs on the DJIA and the S&P 500 are not fully clear until the final minutes of the trading day? Lots it appears. US markets followed global markets higher this morning after China announced its partially more flexible Yuan-Dollar peg promise. A strengthening Euro and concerns in energy and retail sectors took out the strength of the day, as sellers started coming into the market right before the last hour of trading. Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,442.41 -8.23 (-0.08%)
S&P 500 1,113.20 -4.31 (-0.39%)
Nasdaq 2,289.09 -20.71 (-0.90%)

Top Analyst Calls

It took an act of Congress, but MasterCard (MA) was one of only three stocks in the S&P 500 to gain value during Thursday's market sell off.

The U.S. Senate approved a financial reform bill that creates a consumer protection agency, prohibits banks from investing in derivatives and limits proprietary trading by banks by a vote of 59 to 39 Thursday. However, one key amendment that would have allowed states to cap interest rates on out-of-state lenders -- especially credit card providers, like MasterCard -- fell by the wayside as the bill moved toward passage.

Analyst Upgrades

• Janney Montgomery upgraded MasterCard (MA) to buy from neutral. The firm has a $250 price target on the stock.
• Lazard upgraded Frontline (FRO) to hold from sell following the better than expected Q1 report.
• Knight Capital (NITE) was upgraded at BMO Capital to outperform from market perform. The firm cites valuation and improved fundamentals for the downgrade. The firm has an $18 price target on the stock.
• Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) was upgraded to overweight from equal weight at Barclays.
• Carnival (CCL) was upgraded to neutral from sell at Goldman.
• Computer Sciences (CSC) was upgraded to buy from hold at Stifel Nicolaus.

U.S. stock futures declined Friday morning, pointing to a weaker start for the session as investors awaited a batch of economy data, including consumer sentiment. Meanwhile, concerns about Europe and its debt persisted as did worries about the global economic outlook.

Starting at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, several economic reports are due. The Commerce Department will report April retail sales at 8:30 a.m. Sales are expected to have risen just 0.2% after climbing 1.9% the previous month, according to Briefing.com. Excluding autos, sales are expected to show a gain of 0.4%, compared to a March increase of 0.9%. The weather and an early Easter are blamed for the tiny gain.

Investors liked what they saw in credit/debit card payment transaction giant MasterCard's (MA) first quarter report: earnings of $3.46 per share, compared to the Thomson/Reuters First Call estimate of $3.14. MasterCard earned $2.80 a year ago.

First quarter revenue rose about 8% to $1.3 billion, compared to the First Call estimate of $1.27 billion. Cross-border volume increased 10.9%. MA's operating margin rose to 53.5%, up 4.9 percentage points from a year ago.

Again this week, consensus forecasts for companies reporting quarterly results call for double-digit earnings growth from many of them, compared to the results from a year ago when shares of many companies were at recessionary lows.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for strong earnings results from Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU), Time Warner Inc. (TWX), MasterCard Inc. (MA) and Washington Post Co. (WPO), which we'll take a closer look at here, as well as from Devon Energy (DVN), DirecTV (DTV), Loews (L), Marsh & McLennan (MMC), NYSE Euronext (NYX), Williams Companies (WMB) and others.

Visa (V), which competes with American Express (AXP), Discover Financial Services (DFS), and MasterCard (MA), is probably one of the best long-term ideas out there, in my opinion. Credit and debit cards will always play a vital role in the financial culture, and Visa is a top brand in the space.

The equity's 52-week high stands at $97.19. It closed yesterday at $93.61, up a paltry 66 cents, or 0.7%. The stock wasn't rocking into the earnings report, which was released after the bell. And it's pulled back a little from the 52-week high. So what? The one-year chart looks attractive to my eye, and even if it didn't, this is one story I'm fully behind.

I'm going to take a brief look at two earnings releases from the week. One involves a business backed by an iconic piece of financial plastic while the other concerns a company that is a dividend play based on brands such as Kleenex.

American Express (AXP), which competes with MasterCard (MA) and Visa (V), had a great Q1. Reuters says that the company made 73 cents per share, a number that is nine pennies ahead of analyst projections. The growth in net income was impressive, and it shows that the economy is performing a lot better than it once was.

In order to spur spending, Target Corporation (TGT) has long offered

discounts to consumers who signed up for its store-brand credit cards. And more often than not, those cards carried the Visa, Inc. (V) logo.

Well, not any more. This week, TGT announced it will no longer issue cards with the Visa logo and instead encourage shoppers to sign up for its own plastic "REDcard." It's a trend that could sap revenue away from credit card stocks V, Mastercard In (MA) and American Express (AXP).

It's a shopaholic's dream and a privacy advocate's nightmare -- a credit card that knows what you've been buying and can make recommendations on what to splurge on next.

Through a new partnership with an Internet company that specializes in personalized shopping, MasterCard (MA) just rolled out a Web shopping mall call MasterCard Marketplace on Monday. The gimmick is that it can predict what MA cardholders are likely to purchase and make suggestions. Now that consumer spending is actually above it's 2008 peak (really!), it is the perfect time for such a program.

The shares of MasterCard (MA), which I first wrote about on April 13, 2009, at a price of $176.06, corrected roughly in-sync with the Dow's late-January/early-February correction, but just look on the above as a chance to scoop-up MA shares at a decent price.

The reason? MasterCard has emerged from the nation's worst recession in more than 25 years in enviable shape, even amid the frugal consumer era that's likely to restrict U.S. consumer spending. Look for transaction growth to continue, as a result of the global trend toward increased use of credit cards. Revenue should increase an impressive 9% to 12% in 2010 and 10 % to 15% in 2011.

Discover Financial Services (DFS) issued its fiscal first quarter report Tuesday after the bell. According to an article at BusinessWeek.com, a net loss of 22 cents per share was recorded. Last year at this time, the card entity, which counts American Express (AXP) as a colleague, brought in 25 cents per share of positive income.

The quarter's red ink was driven by an addition to loan loss reserves. Without that aspect, Reuters says that Discover brought in a profit of 11 cents per share. Unfortunately, that won't help the company win the expectations game. The estimate at Earnings.com indicates a desired figure of 12 cents for the bottom line.

Back in the late 1990s, I met Steve Streit at a Starbucks, Inc. (SBUX). Tired of his career in the radio business, he saw an opportunity to use the Internet to change the financial services industry. While the business plan was still somewhat vague -- which is usually the case -- the vision looked spot-on.

Well, his company became Green Dot. And now it has filed to go public.

Green Dot is a leading player in the market for general purpose reloadable prepaid debit cards (GPR). Basically, these allow consumers to spend money on the main payment networks, such as Visa, Inc. (V) or MasterCard Inc. (MA).

Mastercard (MA) reported that consumer spending rose 3.6% in January, showing consumers were spending modestly.

It's interesting, the focus that there is on consumer spending in America. Consumer spending is looked at as a holy grail of pushing the economy forward. Stimulus checks and cash-for-clunkers programs are a few of the recent programs that have highlighted this thinking. Ultimately, though it is investments in capital goods and services that have a profound effect on the long-term productivity and welfare of a people.