Visa 's stock price is likely to benefit as the payments processor prepares for a windfall tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup , according to Wolfe Research. The research firm has an outperform on Visa and raised its price target on the stock Wednesday to $395 from $385, implying 28% upside from Tuesday's close. "Feedback [on Visa's earnings call] surrounded this year's marketing contribution to [valu...
Visa 's stock price is likely to benefit as the payments processor prepares for a windfall tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup , according to Wolfe Research. The research firm has an outperform on Visa and raised its price target on the stock Wednesday to $395 from $385, implying 28% upside from Tuesday's close. "Feedback [on Visa's earnings call] surrounded this year's marketing contribution to [value-added services] growth from the … World Cup as well as [foreign exchange volume] assumption implicit in guidance," analyst Darrin Peller said in a 10-page report to clients. "Overall, commentary suggests that VAS growth was broad-based and should have a sizable runaway beyond this year, especially in the context of greater agentic-led fraud demands." Visa on Tuesday reported better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results, and raised its forecast for the current fiscal year, partially due to the expected impact of the FIFA World Cup on consumer and commercial spending. In reaction, Visa soared 10% in the trading session following the earnings report. Visa is the official payments partner for FIFA's global soccer event, which is expected to attract more than 1.2 million visitors to the New York-New Jersey area this summer, according to FIFA. More broadly, Wolfe Research said Visa customers' spending trends "remain healthy," despite a dip in travel-related purchases due to the Iran war. That decline has been offset by stronger cross-border e-commerce spending, however, Wolfe added. The recommendation on Visa matches the consensus view on Wall Street. Of 42 analysts covering Visa, 39 rate it a buy or strong buy, LSEG data shows. Shares have fallen nearly 12% in 2026.
Ares Capital (NASDAQ: ARCC) currently offers investors a monster 10% dividend yield. The business development company (BDC) has an excellent record of paying dividends, having delivered stability and growth for 16 consecutive years. While the company has a long history of delivering income stability, its declining earnings are raising concerns about its ability to maintain the current dividend lev...
Ares Capital (NASDAQ: ARCC) currently offers investors a monster 10% dividend yield. The business development company (BDC) has an excellent record of paying dividends, having delivered stability and growth for 16 consecutive years. While the company has a long history of delivering income stability, its declining earnings are raising concerns about its ability to maintain the current dividend level. Here's a look at those numbers and whether Ares Capital's high-yielding dividend is at risk of getting reduced. Image source: Getty Images. Continue reading
Max Pressure: U.S. Prepares For Extended Hormuz Blockade As Treasury Warns Sanction Risks Linked To China's "Teapot" Refineries The U.S. is intensifying pressure on Iran and China across two fronts. First, on the military side , The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump told top aides to prepare for an extended U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a move that would strangle Teh...
Max Pressure: U.S. Prepares For Extended Hormuz Blockade As Treasury Warns Sanction Risks Linked To China's "Teapot" Refineries The U.S. is intensifying pressure on Iran and China across two fronts. First, on the military side , The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump told top aides to prepare for an extended U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a move that would strangle Tehran's oil revenue. Second, on the economic side , the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control is warning financial institutions about sanctions exposure related to Chinese independent "teapot" refineries, particularly in Shandong Province, due to their continued purchases and refining of Iranian crude. Taken together , the message from President Trump to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is very clear: Washington is squeezing Iran's oil revenue at both ends of the supply chain, through a continued blockade of the Hormuz chokepoint that enables exports and the Chinese refining network. " China purchases approximately 90 percent of Iran's oil exports , with teapot refineries accounting for the majority of these imports. This revenue ultimately benefits the Iranian regime, its weapons programs, and its military," Treasury explained in a press release, adding, " Some Chinese teapot refineries have used the U.S. financial system to conduct dollar-denominated transactions and procure U.S. goods." What OFAC is doing is urging banks to tighten controls, conduct enhanced due diligence on transactions involving China-based refineries, and communicate sanctions expectations to correspondent banks. Treasury also imposed sanctions on 35 entities and individuals for their roles in Iran's shadow banking sector. The reason the Treasury singled out Shandong Province is that the area in China is a core hub for China's independent refineries. Efforts to end the US-Iran war, now entering the third month, have morphed from an air campaign against Tehran to an economic war w...
Editor's note: Seeking Alpha is proud to welcome Cavan Tang as a new contributing analyst. You can become one too! Share your best investment idea by submitting your article for review to our editors. Get published, earn money, and unlock exclusive SA Premium access. Click here to find out more » Kenneth Cheung/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images Rating: Buy Price target: $422.32 Browse through soc...
Editor's note: Seeking Alpha is proud to welcome Cavan Tang as a new contributing analyst. You can become one too! Share your best investment idea by submitting your article for review to our editors. Get published, earn money, and unlock exclusive SA Premium access. Click here to find out more » Kenneth Cheung/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images Rating: Buy Price target: $422.32 Browse through social media long enough and you'll start to understand why Adobe ( ADBE ) trades at where it does. The output quality of generative AI has improved at a pace that's hard to overstate, to the point where it's getting difficult to distinguish what is real from what is synthetic. A long-only equity investor looking at this may wonder, why pay a premium for a suite of tools that can seemingly be replicated for free? That question is what has driven Adobe's forward P/E multiple from the mid-40s into just slightly above 10. It is also, I'd argue, the wrong question entirely. The market is asking whether Photoshop, Premiere, and the like can compete with generative AI, or will it be replaced entirely when the more relevant question is whether anything can displace the integrated system Adobe has built: the integrated workflows, format standards, and institutional standardization that make switching costs not only high but operationally disruptive, and nothing has emerged to change that. For that reason, I rate Adobe a buy. Content supply chain: an invisible infrastructure The majority of discussions about Adobe's business revolve around their industry leading software for digital media, less so about their file formats, and almost never about the invisible infrastructure that binds the entire digital content supply chain together. Author The content supply chain begins with ideation and concept development and ends with analytics and the feedback loop. While the diagram above shows a linear process, in practice it's a continuous iterative process where the feedback informs revisions...
Oracle (ORCL) shares closed at US$165.96, leaving some investors asking how that price lines up with the company’s earnings profile, cloud heavy business mix, and recent return pattern. See our latest analysis for Oracle. The 1 day share price return of a 4.1% decline and 7 day return of an 8.4% decline sit against a 30 day share price return of 18.8% and a 1 year total shareholder return of 19.1%...
Oracle (ORCL) shares closed at US$165.96, leaving some investors asking how that price lines up with the company’s earnings profile, cloud heavy business mix, and recent return pattern. See our latest analysis for Oracle. The 1 day share price return of a 4.1% decline and 7 day return of an 8.4% decline sit against a 30 day share price return of 18.8% and a 1 year total shareholder return of 19.1%. This suggests recent momentum has cooled after a stronger run. If Oracle has you thinking about...
Hi, it’s Julia Fioretti in Hong Kong, looking into how top battery maker CATL opted for a much shorter-than-usual settlement period for its $5 billion share sale. Also today, one of the biggest ever private equity exits in Europe. Today’s top stories Finland’s Kone agrees to buy TK Elevator for €29.4 billion . Ackman’s fund IPO raises $5 billion for permanent capital plan. EQT prepares improved ta...
Hi, it’s Julia Fioretti in Hong Kong, looking into how top battery maker CATL opted for a much shorter-than-usual settlement period for its $5 billion share sale. Also today, one of the biggest ever private equity exits in Europe. Today’s top stories Finland’s Kone agrees to buy TK Elevator for €29.4 billion . Ackman’s fund IPO raises $5 billion for permanent capital plan. EQT prepares improved takeover offer for UK’s Intertek. Amadeus buys Idemia border-control arm to expand in airports. Pernod Ricard and Jack Daniel’s maker end merger discussions. Settling up CATL, the world’s top battery maker, has a penchant for eye-catching deals. The latest came Monday, with its $5 billion share placement—the biggest offering in Hong Kong this year and one of the biggest in the city’s history. The timing was opportune: CATL’s shares had rallied over 150% since their debut in the city. Strategic timing (see the chart below) wasn’t the only aspect that stood out. In this case, the placement is due to settle in just two days, as opposed to the normal five days for such deals in Hong Kong. A faster settlement means the process can be done and dusted and investors have their shares before the city’s Labor Day holiday on May 1. Otherwise they’d be waiting until next Wednesday, which is a long time to sit on market risk in times like these. This leads us to another benefit of wrapping things up quickly: tighter pricing. Investors tend to demand wider discounts if they have to take on more risk, and CATL has shown a distinct preference for tight discounts. It priced both its Hong Kong listing last year and this week’s placement at discounts of about 7% to its Shenzhen- and Hong Kong-traded shares, respectively. Of course, it means more work for CATL’s bankers and the local stock exchange, which have to get the necessary approvals in place for the settlement in just two days instead of five. “The intended settlement period for share placements is part of commercially agreed terms betwe...
From the Emotional Roller Coaster to the Worry-go-round, cartoonist Gemma Correll walks us through her brain's not-so-amusing amusement park in a darkly funny memoir .
From the Emotional Roller Coaster to the Worry-go-round, cartoonist Gemma Correll walks us through her brain's not-so-amusing amusement park in a darkly funny memoir .
Investors choosing between iShares Gold Trust (NYSEMKT:IAU) and iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT:SLV) must weigh the lower cost of IAU and gold relative stability against the recent outperformance and volatility of SLV. Both funds provide direct exposure to physical precious metals without the logistical challenges of storage, security, or insurance. While they belong to the same commodity family, go...
Investors choosing between iShares Gold Trust (NYSEMKT:IAU) and iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT:SLV) must weigh the lower cost of IAU and gold relative stability against the recent outperformance and volatility of SLV. Both funds provide direct exposure to physical precious metals without the logistical challenges of storage, security, or insurance. While they belong to the same commodity family, gold and silver often respond differently to industrial demand and macroeconomic shifts. This comparison looks at which trust may better suit an investor risk profile and cost considerations. Beta measures price volatility relative to the S&P 500; beta is calculated from five-year monthly returns. The 1-yr return represents total return over the trailing 12 months. Continue reading
The memory stocks just keep finding new ways to defy the laws of gravity, with the SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), once again, leading the charge higher, with shares up more than 75% in the past month or about 264% year to date. It’s the best performer of the S&P 500 so far this year, and it’s not ... Pros Say Memory Stocks Still Have Room to Run — the Skeptic’s Case Isn’t Crazy Either
The memory stocks just keep finding new ways to defy the laws of gravity, with the SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), once again, leading the charge higher, with shares up more than 75% in the past month or about 264% year to date. It’s the best performer of the S&P 500 so far this year, and it’s not ... Pros Say Memory Stocks Still Have Room to Run — the Skeptic’s Case Isn’t Crazy Either