Vltava Fund, a value-focused investment management company, published its investor letter for the second quarter of 2026. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The letter explores the growing role of AI and how certain facets of human intelligence may become less valuable economically, while other skills become more important. The author emphasizes that despite AI's expanding capabilities in information collection and basic modeling, qualities like sound judgment, good taste, patience, original thinking, strategic skepticism, and the ability to recognize significance will continue to hold their value. Despite the excitement around A.I., fundamental investment principles remain unchanged. Please review the Fund's top five holdings to gain insights into their key selections for 2026.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Vltava Fund highlighted Visa Inc. (NYSE:V). Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is a multinational financial services company known for its payment technology network that offers credit, debit, and prepaid card products and other services. On July 2, 2026, Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) closed at $351.08 per share. One-month return of Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) was 11.92%, and its shares gained 0.91% over the past 52 weeks. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) has a market capitalization of $688.68 billion.
Vltava Fund stated the following regarding Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) in its Q2 2026 investor letter:
"We bought shares in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) and Kaspi.kz. Visa probably needs little introduction. Nevertheless, I'll describe the company briefly, as people are often surprised by just how complex and sophisticated its business is. Visa is not a "card company" in the simple sense of the word. It is a global technology infrastructure for electronic payments that connects banks, merchants, consumers, payments processors, governments, and companies. Its main role is to ensure that payments between two parties are processed quickly, securely, reliably, and with minimal risk without regard to the country, currency, bank, card type, or sales channel involved.
The sophistication of Visa's business lies in the fact that it is not just about forwarding the payment itself. Visa operates an extensive payment network full of rules, technologies, and security standards. It also handles transaction authorization, fraud prevention, settlement, tokenization, data ***** ytics, and risk management. Every payment looks simple to the customer. A person taps with a card or clicks in an online store, but behind all of this lies a highly complex system coordinating among many participants in the financial ecosystem…" (Click here to read the full text)