The Motley Fool’s Top Financial Stock Rankings: Why #3 Could Be Your Ultimate Portfolio Play

Wall Street's sleeping giant just got a wake-up call.

The Motley Fool's latest financial stock rankings dropped bombshell revelations—with the third-ranked contender emerging as the dark horse every savvy investor should watch.

Forget chasing overhyped blue-chips. This under-the-radar pick combines explosive growth potential with rock-solid fundamentals—the holy grail combination most analysts miss while obsessing over headline names.

It's not about following the herd. It's about spotting value before the crowd catches on. And right now, the smart money's positioning for what comes next.

Because let's be honest—if traditional finance worked so well, we wouldn't all be secretly eyeing crypto exits.

What does Visa do?

Visa is what's known as a payment processor. You probably think of it as a credit card company. But it really provides the technology that allows credit and debit cards to be safely used for payments. It connects buyers and sellers on behalf of card issuers, which are often the banks that fill up The Motley Fool's top financial stocks list.

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The interesting thing about Visa is that no single transaction it facilitates is really all that important. That's because it only charges a small fee for the use of its payment network. It's the volume of transactions that FLOW through its network that's important. In the fiscal third quarter of 2025, payment volume increased 10% year over year, with Visa handling 65.4 billion transactions. On a dollar basis, volume rose 8%.

These are gigantic numbers and highlight just how deeply entrenched Visa is in the financial markets. But it is also deeply entrenched on Main Street. You probably have a credit card or debit card (or both) with a Visa logo on it. Most stores you shop at likely trust Visa to act as an intermediary for them. Don't forget online shopping, where most e-commerce sites allow Visa cards to be used as a SAFE payment option.

The world is increasingly moving away from paper money and toward card and digital payments. To be fair, Visa isn't the only company benefiting from this trend. But it is one of a very small number of companies that have an effective oligopoly in the space. That's kind of like a monopoly, but the industry dominance is shared across a small number of companies.

Visa is doing well, but it's not shockingly overpriced

As you might expect, Visa is performing well as a business. In the fiscal third quarter of 2025, revenues ROSE 14%, and adjusted earnings jumped 23%. Investors are aware of how well Visa is doing today, and the stock isn't cheap.

But the real attraction here is that Visa's shares don't look outlandishly expensive, either. Some numbers will help here. The price-to-sales (P/S) ratio is currently around 16.8x, versus a five-year average of 17.7x. The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is 33.5x, compared to a longer-term average of 34.1x.

The P/S ratio and the P/E ratio are not low by any stretch of the imagination, suggesting that value-focused investors might want to watch from the sidelines. But if you are a growth-minded investor, this strongly growing business looks fairly reasonably priced, historically speaking. That puts it into the growth at a reasonable price, or GARP, camp, which is probably a good place to be as the(^GSPC 1.52%) flirts with all-time highs.

Visa isn't perfect, but it is attractive

Visa is doing well as a business. Wall Street knows that and has placed a high price tag on the shares. But that price tag isn't ridiculous when you look back at the company's recent valuation history. Given the ongoing success of the business and the likely future of more digital and card payments, long-term investors looking for an investment opportunity among the largest financial companies should probably make Visa their starting point.