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--Delinquency and net charge-off rates increased for several credit-card issuers --Investors are worried impending fiscal cliff may lead to higher loan losses --Discover's shares fell the most since June (Adds details about Citigroup delinquency and charge-off rates in 21st paragraph.) Increasing worries over consumer-loan performance sent credit-card stocks tumbling Wednesday, with Discover Financial Services DFS -4.10% leading the group lower as one of the biggest decliners in the S&P 500. While the rate of late payments and net charge-offs--loans that are so far behind lenders don't expect to collect on them--remain at or near historic lows for many of the biggest banks, recent upticks have fanned fears that consumers are once again struggling to pay their bills. Those concerns have been exacerbated in recent weeks by discussions over the impending "fiscal cliff," which refers to government tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect after the year's end barring Congress's intervention. The fear is the spending changes could send the U.S. economy back into recession, drive up unemployment and result in a new wave of loan losses for lenders. "If you are worried about the fiscal cliff and you think GDP...could be negatively impacted by several percentage points, what you probably don't want to own is a consumer-driven card issuer," said Donald Fandetti, an analyst who covers consumer-finance stocks for Citigroup Inc. However, Mr. Fandetti says he sees no signs that there has been a fundamental shift in the performance of large credit-card issuers' portfolios, despite some recent gains in delinquency and net charge-off rates. Some of the industry's biggest players on Thursday reported mostly stable performance for October in monthly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the exception being Capital One Financial Corp. COF -2.44% . The McLean, Va.-based lender, which is in the process of digesting its acquisition of HSBC Holdings PLC HBC +0.63% U.S. credit-card business, posted results that were weaker than analysts were expecting. The company's delinquency rate increased to 3.66% in October from 3.52% in September. Its net charge-off rate was 4.25%, up from 3.93% in the previous month. "It appears that credit quality is trending slightly worse than our expectations," Sanjay Sakhrani, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, wrote in a research note on Capital One's results on Thursday, though he doesn't view "October's metrics as thesis changing." Mr. Sakhrani has an outperform rating on the stock. Capital One's shares closed down 2.4% at $54.77 Thursday. Shares of Discover Financial Services closed down 4.1% at $38.34, its worst drop since it closed down 7.2% on June 1. Despite the decline, Discover had already posted October results last week that were better than some analysts expected. Its delinquency rate increased to 1.84% from 1.82% in the previous month, and its net charge-off rate decreased to 2.01% from 2.19%, according to a filing pertaining to Discover's loans that are packaged into securities.