Two weeks ago, Mike Cintolo, editor of Cabot Market Letter and Cabot Top Ten Weekly, drew my attention to an interesting fact. Of the four stocks hitting new lows on the New York Stock Exchange that day, two were MasterCard (MA) and Visa (V), the kings of the credit card business. The reason is obvious. Consumers are cutting back on credit. No longer are they leveraging their assets to the hilt, confident that rising home values and automatic cost-of-living wage increases will enable them to pay off their debt in time. Now, sobered by the drop in real estate...
