Bill Ackman Just Disclosed 6 New Positions, and 4 of Them Are Financial Stocks. Here's What He's Betting On.

Half of the four incoming financial titles are widely known; the other two, somewhat less so.

Each is a fine selection for any portfolio large or small, however.

Star investor Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management (NYSE:PS) is well known for being highly selective with his company’s investments. Pershing’s equity portfolio is always considerably smaller than those of many peer investment managers. So Ackman and his team make news whenever they buy into, or sell out of, a single stock.

Headlines were made, then, when Pershing Square revealed, concurrently with its second-quarter earnings report, that it had taken positions in six new stocks. Four of those half-dozen were top names in the financial industry . Here’s the reasoning behind the move, and a glance at the quartet.

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To cut quickly to the chase, the four were payment card titans Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) , data and analysis specialist S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) , and securities market operator and associated services provider Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) .

(For the curious, the remaining two fresh, non-financial stock buys were Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and pharmaceutical and medical device company Alcon (NYSE:ALC) ).

One admirable thing about Ackman is that he’s eloquent and hardly mysterious about what appeals to him and his company about certain stocks. In the shareholder letter accompanying the second-quarter report, the Pershing Square founder and CEO went into admirable detail regarding what he likes about the six newcomers.