Cash Rewards on Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) Earnings With No Credit Card Needed

Going into the earnings season, credit card transaction processing companies like Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA) have been hit pretty hard due to adverse impacts of the recently approved financial reform regulation which limits the interchange fees they can charge banks and merchants for card transactions.  However the actual regulation in the financial reform bill was scaled back to only cover debit card network fees, which impacts the banks more than it would Visa (V) or it’s card processing competitor MasterCard (MA). Following the public release of the financial reform bill, Visa and MasterCard stock prices dropped nearly 20% from recent highs within just a couple of weeks. While they have recovered somewhat along with the broader market in improving and more certain market conditions I think the stocks have much more upside going into earnings. In fact a fairly risk free trade, albeit with a bit of initial up-front capital, is to buy the stock before earnings (see dates below) and buy put options to cover any short-term down side risk.

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