Credit Card Stocks Tumble Due to Senate Bill

A day after the Senate passed an amendment to the financial reform bill (See 5/14/10 blog post) mandating that credit card companies reduce their fees on debit card purchases, all the major credit card stocks tumbled. Shares of Visa (V) dropped 10%, MasterCard (MA) was down 9%, American Express (AXP) declined 5% and Capital One Financial (COF) lost 5%. Like I said, this will cause hardship on the credit card industry as well as consumers as merchants will pocket savings (as they should) and card companies raise fees on cards and cut rewards programs and promotional offers.  Once again, nice work, Senate!