Mastercard's payment and earnings growth make it more satisfying than ever to own amid Alphabet's and Amazon's post-earnings reactions. Q3 2026 revenue rose 14% to $9.8 billion, adjusted EPS rose 21% to $5.31, and adjusted operating margin was 60.5%. Volume grew 7%, cross-border volume 11%, and $3.8 billion went to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. x.com 

Booking Holdings' buybacks keep increasing each shareholder's ownership share every quarter without any additional purchases. x.com 

Fair Isaac still looks far too expensive at 90x free cash flow, even after a 75% fall in a monopoly. Even if FCF doubled, the price would equal 45 years of cash flow, and doubling at FICO's size is much less plausible after it raised prices 17 times and angered customers. The test is whether the company can earn the price paid within an investor's lifetime under generous growth assumptions. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Mastercard and Raytheon are attractive discounted moat companies as narrow market leadership gives way to panic selling and rotation into overlooked names. Only 20% of the S&P 500 joined the last rally, while both names sit at multi-month discounts and are backed by 60-plus-year trends. x.com 

These 12 stocks are quality compounders sharing pricing power, recurring demand, strong returns on capital and disciplined management. Domino's earns royalties, AutoZone serves an aging fleet, Progressive underwrites with data, Waste Management owns routes and landfills, Grainger is embedded in operations, S&P Global and FICO are mission-critical, Rollins has recurring pest control, Copart an auction network, Visa a fee network, HEICO niche aerospace parts, Costco loyal members. x.com  x.com  … Show more

Booking Holdings' stock split is a topping sign, as stock splits generally are. A split attracts retail flow that minimizes damage on down days, such as one that would otherwise have been about a $300 drop. x.com  x.com 

Caterpillar, Microsoft, Waste Management, Visa, JPMorgan and Mastercard are dividend compounding machines that also buy back shares rapidly, and great stocks return value to shareholders. Since 2013, Mastercard's dividend per share is up 2,517% with shares outstanding down 27.4%; Visa's dividend is up 888%, Microsoft's 304% and JPMorgan's 334%. Caterpillar has cut its share count 30%, JPMorgan 27.6% and Waste Management 13.3%. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Visa, Mastercard, ASML, TSMC, Costco and Apple are wonderful businesses worth holding forever at a fair price; none is cheap, and that is the point. Each has a durable moat: Search and YouTube, 3.6 billion daily users, enterprise switching costs, CUDA, card-payment toll booths, the only EUV machines, leading-edge chipmaking at scale, Costco's 92% renewal rate and Apple's 2.5 billion devices. Most pair high margins and returns on capital with strong growth. … Show more

The Magnificent Seven are set to underperform other parts of tech as buybacks shrink and capex rises. Per Goldman Sachs, consensus sees hyperscaler capex of $755B in 2026, up 83% and reaching 100% of operating cash flow; Q1 buybacks fell 64% year over year, and shareholder returns now take 20% of spending versus 34% in 2017-2022. Nvidia has already underperformed and may be owed some catch-up, but its huge valuation makes its old growth rate hard to sustain. x.com  x.com 

Qualcomm, Johnson & Johnson, Wendy's, IBM, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Caterpillar are steady dividend payers that pay investors to wait, in keeping with Warren Buffett's rule never to lose money. Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have raised their dividends for decades. Qualcomm licenses wireless patents nearly every phone maker pays for, IBM leads in quantum computing research, and Caterpillar is a growing supplier of power generation for data centers. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  … Show more