SOME USEFUL RESOURCES
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SECURITIES AND ANTITRUST LITIGATION
The business world is an ocean of big and little fish, with minnows looking for a way to thrive in the presence of sharks. While such an environment can be cutthroat and merciless, the minnows, which in this analogy are the small business owners, investors, and consumers, have legal protections that keep the sharks, i.e. the big businesses, from swallowing them whole. Securities laws prohibits majority shareholders, corporate boards of directors, and executives from misleading minority shareholders, inducing investors to buy into a company with false pretenses, and other acts that confer an unfair advantage. Antitrust laws protect smaller businesses from actions by their competitors intended to stifle competition or otherwise push them out of their market. When an unlawful practice affects a significantly large number of shareholders, investors, small businesses, or consumers, they may wish to pool their resources to assert their rights.
ASIAN MARKETS ANALYSIS: SOME OLD HABITS DIE HARD
Key View
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Mainland China continues to see high usage of mobile services like e-commerce. Key drivers of this trend include strong internet connectivity, high smartphone penetration rates, rising usage of 5G and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The e-commerce market, however, is saturated and highly competitive, pushing some players like Eachnet out of business. Similar observations can be made for Hong Kong, China.
YEAR IN REVIEW & WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT
In an already volatile year for stocks, what may lie ahead for the rest of 2025? Market activity that has transpired year-to-date could be a microcosm of what’s to come: A close battle between the positives and negatives.
At this stage of an economic recovery, it is not that unusual for the U.S. Federal Reserve to begin shifting policy and reducing liquidity. Tightening financial conditions weigh on equities, especially the more speculative stocks. However, the fourth quarter earnings reports for corporate America held good news overall. Clearly the earnings misses get the headlines, nevertheless, consensus earnings estimates for the S&P 500 for 2022, 2023 and 2024 are higher today than they were at the end of 2025.1 Overall, corporate America is healthier than Wall Street has expected. Throw in the resumption of strong company stock buybacks, and there is your good news for stocks.
The clash between tightening financial conditions and good news from corporate America’s earnings results could characterize most of the year, which is not unusual for the third year of an economic recovery. Investors shouldn’t let the bears scare them out of taking advantage of selloffs, but they also shouldn’t chase gains when there’s a lot of market strength. In the end, 2025 could be an OK year for the market return overall, just not as strong as what we’ve seen in the last few years.
