Mastercard Is in Millions of Portfolios.
Last Quarter, Elite Investors Were Quietly Buying Its Rival Quick Read – Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group bought $212 million in Visa shares while Mastercard trades at a five-point forward P/E premium for the same network economics. – Visa’s earlier stablecoin settlement infrastructure and four consecutive EPS beats strengthen its case if crypto rails eventually compress card-network margins. – Soros Fund Management countered Klarman by opening a fresh Mastercard stake, showing elite investors remain split on which network wins. – Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Visa didn’t make the cut
Grab the names FREE today. Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group opened a new position in Visa (NYSE:V) during the first quarter of 2026, disclosing 701,355 shares valued at $211,978,000 in the 13F filed May 15, 2026. That stake ran roughly 4.14% of the disclosed portfolio, which for a manager who has spent four decades apologizing for the stocks he owns is a loud way to plant a flag.
Klarman is a patience-first allocator. Baupost’s letters return to the same themes year after year: margin of safety, patience, avoiding businesses whose economics can be undone by a single regulation or a single competitor. A fresh Visa position at these prices suggests he sees the card-network duopoly as more durable than the current stablecoin panic implies.