I've said on many occasions that I prefer MasterCard (NYSE: MA) to Visa (NYSE: V). No, I don't mean the card products themselves. I mean the stocks. I believe Visa has better brand equity associated with it, and I think it possesses a little more depth and fundamental prowess. However, both of these companies operate on the same basic economic model: collect fees on transactions, and don't take on loan risk. So, both MasterCard and Visa do offer compelling long-term investment theses.

And, even though there were some negative outlooks on MasterCard's latest earnings report, which was released Tuesday, I have to say that I didn't find the situation too disturbing. Revenues increased only 2%. The top line was inhibited by currency effects, but it's not like we haven't heard that story before. More importantly, MasterCard posted adjusted income of $3.48 per share, representative of a 40% increase over the adjusted income recorded a year ago.

Visa (NYSE: V) is one of my favorite businesses on Wall Street. It should be an excellent long-term investment. People will always use branded credit cards, and Visa doesn't take a lot of risk. It simply collects a little of the spoils on each transaction. What a model!

According to TheStreet.com, Visa increased top-line sales by 10% in the fourth quarter, and expanded per-share profit by 28% to 74 cents, excluding certain items. Forecasts were for 72 cents per share.

Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), a credit card company that competes with Visa (NYSE: V), MasterCard (NYSE: MA), and American Express (NYSE: AXP), released earnings for the third quarter on Thursday. The company put analysts to shame by posting a profit instead of a loss according to an article from Reuters.

The projection was for a loss of 12 cents per share. Discover actually made 52 cents per share of profit, once you exclude monies received from an antitrust settlement. Wow, that's what you call being way off the mark! The disparity surprised me, so I went to our very own earnings preview to see what we were reporting for an estimate. Sure enough, it stated the exact same expectation for a loss of 12 cents.

American Express Company (NYSE: AXP), a company that competes with Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA), and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), issued Q2 results earlier in the week. Earnings from continuing operations dropped very steeply to 9 cents per share. How steeply? Well, the per-share profit lost 84% of its value this time around. However, it might make you feel a little better to know that 18 cents can be added back, since that was the net worth of repurchase activity relating to preferred shares from the U.S. Treasury department. Therefore, American Express took in 27 cents per share from continuing activities. According to this Reuters piece, that number met expectations.

The Reuters article also points out that revenues fell by 18% and that net charge-offs increased. Not a great picture. Reading through the press release, an investor might come away with a feeling of dread. Management mentions the not-so-strong spending by its cardmembers and the fact that loan losses are at historic levels.

Shares of American Express (NYSE: AXP) bottomed in early March at just over $10 per share.

Instead of covering, I hedged my bet by keeping the American Express short open. I suppose that is the entire point of absolute return investing, but boy, was I wrong in doing that.

AXP shot up like a rocket over the last three months and now trades above $23 per share. It has been a big gainer this year, returning 25% through the end of the second quarter.

With such uncertainty, following an absolute return strategy continues to offer investors the biggest bang for their buck. There is no sense in guessing where the market will be down the road.

Instead, buy cheap stocks and sell stocks that are expensive. Then blend the two approaches together in one portfolio and chances are you'll make money.

Even with a huge rally in stocks, the S&P 500 ended the second quarter with a year-to-date gain of 1.78%. That is a vast improvement compared to the 11% loss at the end of the first quarter, but it's a minimal return for taking risk in the stock market.

Investors need to do better -- and they can.

Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), a credit-card company that competes with Visa (NYSE: V), MasterCard (NYSE: MA), and American Express (NYSE: AXP), reported earnings for the second quarter. According to this news summary, Discover beat expectations by posting a loss of $0.18 per share. The market thought that the loss would be as high as $0.29 per share.

If you read the actual press release, you'll see that Discover, on a reported basis, made $0.43 per share. However, we must remember that this profit included an antitrust settlement sourced to Visa and MasterCard. So, once you get rid of that money, you come up with a loss for the quarter.

Not all weeks can end on an a positive note, and this week was just one of those weeks. Maybe the bulls went into hibernation, or maybe it was all just profit taking. The DJIA closed out last week at 8,574.65, so the drop to 8,273.50 shows what sort of week it was. Inflation is still tame and the Empire Manufacturing data was actually close to positive.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell numbers:

Dow 8,273.50 -57.82 (-0.69%)
S&P 500 883.37 -9.70 (-1.09%)
Nasdaq 1,680.14 -9.07 (-0.54%)

Top Analyst Calls

Small biz credit card issuer Advanta (NAS: ADVNA) will shut down accounts to preserve capital and will stop lending June 10, according to Bloomberg. The company has 1 million customers that could be left without credit cards, yet another blow for small businesses suffocating without sufficient credit lines. Shares tumbled 24% on the news to less than a dollar per issue.

Visa (NYSE: V), whose colleagues include American Express (NYSE: AXP), MasterCard (NYSE: MA), and Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), reported a Q2 profit on Wednesday that was surprisingly strong. On an adjusted basis, earnings came in at 73 cents per share. Analysts were banking on only 64 cents per share, according to Reuters.

Quite frankly, I can see the disparity between Wall Street's thinking and the ultimate reality. I mean, the economy has been bad (to state the obvious), and people aren't spending as much. This means that they aren't using their credit cards like they used to. Ergo, you might expect Visa to post a lower number.

American Express (NYSE: AXP - option chain) shares are soaring higher today after the company reported a first-quarter profit of $361 million or 31 cents per share. AXP's adjusted profit came in at 32 cents per share, beating analysts' forecasts of 12 cents per share. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on AXP.

AXP opened this morning at $22.69. So far today the stock has hit a low of $22.05 and a high of $24.10. As of 11:25, AXP is trading at $23.74, up $2.77 (13.2%). The chart for AXP looks bearish and S&P gives AXP a negative 2 STARS (out of 5) sell ranking.

Today's late-day rally had a common theme throughout the day: less-bad economic data. This went from better housing data and CPI not showing any deflation fears. The Beige Book was also showing that some of the 12 Fed regions are seeing a decline in the slowdown. Here are today's unofficial closing levels, which were essentially around the highs of the day:

Dow 8,029.62 +109.44 (1.38%)
S&P 500 852.06 +10.56 (1.25%)
Nasdaq 1,626.80 +1.08 (0.07%)

Top 10 Analyst Calls

"What can get this market going again?" asks Chuck Carlson. In The DRIP Investor he says, "It's helpful to understand what stocks within the Dow need to do well for the index to do well."

"Not surprisingly, IBM (NYSE: IBM), the highest-priced stock in the Dow, carries the greatest weighting at more than 9% of the index. Obviously, with such a heavy weighting in the index, IBM will need to be a decent performer for the Dow to do well going forward.

"And when you total up the exposure of IBM with the other tech stocks in the Dow - Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) - the total tech weighting in the Dow is 16%. Thus, tech stocks matter to the Dow, so it is diffcult to see the Dow sustaining a move upward without a nice rebound in the tech sector.

I'm not the biggest fan of Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), the credit-card company that competes with MasterCard (NYSE: MA), Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V), and American Express (NYSE: AXP). I currently like Visa the best. Why? I like the brand, I like the fact that it doesn't have direct exposure to loans, and I think there's a lot of upside left to its stock price on a long-term basis (granted, the stock hasn't been strong lately). Nevertheless, I have to wonder if there might be trade potential with Discover's stock.

It's not so much the Q4 earnings. Net income from continuing operations more than doubled to $0.92 per share, something that looks great on the surface. It was helped along, however, by settlement proceeds relating to antitrust complaints against Visa and MasterCard. Not only that, but when you take a look at the consumer-confidence landscape, you'll see that it's pretty dreadful. It doesn't take too much thinking to realize that spending will be down and bad loans most likely will be up going forward. This doesn't benefit Discover. But, according to this article, government help does. Management wants access to some of the monies available in the now-famous federal rescue package. Bank-holding status, if Discover gets it, will do the trick.

This is why I see some trade potential with the stock. It rose the other day on the news, and as I am writing this now, the stock is up another 3%. If one was to play around with Discover, one should only do so temporarily, in my opinion. I think, on a longer-term basis, that either Visa or MasterCard are much better options for investing in the eventual consumer rebound (whenever that decides to happen, of course). Again, all you have to do is remember that Discover has more on the line in terms of charge-offs and loan provisions. Yes, the government can help out Discover's situation, and that will be valuable, but I still wouldn't want the company as a core member of my portfolio.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Visa (NYSE: V), the famous credit and debit card business, which competes with MasterCard (NYSE: MA) and American Express (NYSE: AXP), reported results for the fourth quarter on Thursday. I came away from them feeling pretty bullish.

No, it wasn't so much the numbers as it was the fact that the credit-card concern constructed a litigation settlement with Discover (NYSE: DFS). The latter had antitrust issues with Visa, and it was a part of the company's story that bothered me. Visa will pony up almost $1.9 billion to Discover to make everything hopefully okay between the two (for more about the settlement, check out Elizabeth Harrow's post). Most of the money was already set aside in a fund in anticipation of the settlement. That's awesome.

And as for earnings, well, Visa lost money on a GAAP basis during Q4 driven by the litigation provision. But on an adjusted basis, excluding that provision and other charges, Visa earned $0.58 per diluted share. That was a penny better than Wall Street expectations.

This makes the Visa story even more attractive than it already was. Honestly, as a long-term investment, Visa should be a winner. I know the economy doesn't rule right now, but I don't think there's anyone out there who believes that credit cards are going away.