The stock market closed lower on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75% – 4.00%. The central also signaled that another rate hike could come later this year.
Overall, S&P 500 slipped 0.5% to 7,552, while Nasdaq was flat at 25,978.
Chart of the Day
Here is the one-year chart of Mastercard (MA) as of September 8, 2026, when the stock was at $571.
Last quarter, MasterCard continued to deliver profit growth that’s above average for this stock. Last quarter, profits increased 21%, which was above its ten-year average of 18% (which used to be 17% prior to this rapid growth phase). Revenue increased a solid 14% and was driven by Value Added Services & Solutions (+20%) and higher transaction volumes (+8%) across its global payment network.
Looking ahead, MasterCard plans to invest in value-added services, commercial payments, cybersecurity, and AI-enabled commerce, while expanding into stablecoins and agentic payments. AI Agents that can do procurement for raw materials & services is the next big thing in payment processing. In the earnings call, management highlighted its new MasterCard Agent Pay for Machines initiative, designed to allow AI agents to make small purchases such as APIs, data, compute, and content ad machine speed. MasterCard is the only network allowing machine-to-machine payments.
MA is part of the Conservative Portfolio, the Focus List, and the Growth Portfolio.
