Sold about a third of my Mastercard Inc (MA) holdings on Friday at $64.79. I got in to Mastercard Inc (MA) in the mid 40’s and thought to myself this over 40% gain is ridiculous and better cash in some of these gains before I give it all back like with some other stocks…then I was kicking myself when it shot past $65. But yeah, its impossible to call the top and its why you should never buy or sell all at once. I think Mastercard Inc (MA) is great and am staying with it long term, but the recent jump is too much I think to sustain. I may be wrong and will be kicking myself again if it shoots to $70 in the near term. I’ll be looking to buy it back on a pullback below $60, which is where I think it should be at this time. I wasn’t expecting it to hit $65 till the end of the year, but hey, what do I know? Oh, and they will start distributing a quarterly dividend of $0.09 on October 10th, which should keep the stock up.

Never bought an IPO (Initial Public Offering, i.e. when a company first starts offering its stock to the public), but then again, I’ve never done a lot of things in the stock market. Mastercard Inc (MA) came public at the end of May at $39. The thing was the price of $39 was a lot lower than what a lot of people thought the company was worth. Mastercard Inc (MA)’s IPO came on the heels of probably the worst IPO of the year, Vonage Holding Corp (VG), so the people who priced the Mastercard Inc (MA)’s IPO because they thought Vonage had turned people off from IPO’s. Well, Mastercard Inc (MA)’s IPO should have been priced in the mid to low $50’s and gone to $60’s, which is has and which is why I’m taking some off the table.

That said, I’m still a bit uneasy about selling some here, but I’m uneasy about giving back my gains too. There’s currently a rally in the retail stocks going on right now because of the low oil prices and we’re heading into the fall shopping/holiday season. I’m leaning towards categorizing Mastercard Inc (MA) with retail than just “services” because Mastercard Inc (MA) should benefit greatly from increased consumer spending. The more people buy stuff and charge it to their Mastercard Inc (MA) creditcard, they more Mastercard Inc (MA) makes- simple as that. So, hoping for a nearterm pullback to get right back in.

Read about how Vonage Holding Corp (VG) died.

About Mastercard Inc (MA)

**Disclaimer: I own shares of Mastercard as of this posting**
**Disclaimer: I do not own shars of Vonage as of this posting**

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 8:18 am and is filed under Non-Stocks, Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.