COFCapital One Financial Corporation

Capital One is a bank built around credit cards: it earns more than an ordinary bank and loses more in bad years.

The main income is interest on card balances, materially higher than mortgage or corporate lending rates. The price is credit risk: card charge-offs rise faster than any other loan type when the labour market weakens, and they set the year's result more than origination volume does.

The metrics investors watch are delinquency rates and provisions for expected losses: provisions are booked ahead and hit profit before actual defaults appear. Auto lending is the second large line with the same logic.

The Discover acquisition added a payment network of its own: a rare combination that avoids paying another network for processing and earns merchant fees directly. The bank pays a dividend; capital requirements constrain buybacks.