News and analysis

Meta Platforms (META) revisited the area near its all-time highs after its leading founder Mark Zuckerberg’s most encouraging announcement that his media giant is embarking on its journey to restore the right to free expression of opinion. When wearing an extremely rare Swiss watch with an exclusive Greubel Forsey "Hand Made 1" writing on his left wrist (worth about $900,000, according to Bloomberg), he shed some light on the social platform owner's decision to end its previous thorough and boring automatized fact checking procedures in a Facebook video this Tuesday. "We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violation," he, in particular, said, while claiming "a more personalized approach" to political content, so that "people who want to see more of it in their feeds can". In an official article headed "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes", Meta noted later that "on platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display... but that’s free expression".

Since 2019, Meta developed growingly complex systems to manage content in response to "societal and political pressure" but now they have become ready to admit "this approach has gone too far". "What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas", is one of Mark Zuckerberg's actual quotes, as one more of his sentences said "we have reached the point that there are just too many mistakes and too much censorship", so that "it's time to get back to our roots". Starting in the U.S., the largest social community in the world (more than 3 billion users) would change its algorithm, moving to a so-called "Community Notes" mode to personally complain about unacceptable and intolerable posts or remarks on the platform.

This happened in the very first regular trading week of January, and so the initial and enthusiastic bullish wave up to $631.55 per share was quickly offset by an immediate technical recovery to $605 and below. Yet, the Wall Street crowd bought up the dips without shelving. There's not a doubt in my mind that postponed and more lasting effects are all still ahead, since this is a real revolution in adjusting Facebook and Instagram closer to the standards, which were recently refounded by the former Twitter, now X. The shift was clearly launched ahead of the president-elect Trump's inauguration, as the key MMA figure Dana White, who was an important part of Trump's election campaign, was newly appointed to Meta's board. Another Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan has become a head of the global policy department at Meta. Zuckerberg flew down to Trump's Mar-a-Lago place in November and later donated $1 million to his inaugural fund, blaming the present Democratic administration for increased censorship pressure that prompted a global trend towards increased regulation. I believe this is a time for reckoning, which can create an additionally positive momentum for the stock's further rising.

My personal target price for Meta stock is well above $750, as I already assessed the company as very promising before the announced changes in policy. More suitable textual and visual stuff without artificial limitations on free discussion will certainly attract more advertisers, also encouraging a large number of former users to return for posting and reading. It is well known that many temporary bans of users were even too far from being based on divisive political considerations or other most controversial topics like the race card, national conflicts or vaccinations. I personally know of some most ridiculous cases like Christmas cards featuring a Madonna nursing a baby being removed, and users were banned, or art posts with ancient Greek sculptures that included bare chests of statues as another good and strange example. Sometimes quite harmless messages were flagged as hate speech by stupid algorithms. Of course, many people were offended because of this kind of attitude, and they have gone away, but now some of them may try to restore their relationship with Facebook and Instagram. As a result, Meta will be able to raise even more money, adding additional revenue and profits to its records of 2024. Artificial intelligence recommendations and targeted advertising will only help in doing business.

We'll see if there are many taboo topics. But I'm an optimist, looking forward to a flurry of memes about the "great state of Canada", Greenland, all that hyping trolling of Trump and Musk and other current agenda. I don't know if our world is starting to return to a more or less normal normality, but Meta seems to have decided to repaint its way of mirroring the real world into colours that can better match the full spectrum of customers' views. I saw it was good. And here is my final piece of The Rolling Stones styled ode. Please sing it mentally in Mick Jagger's voice:

Smiling Facebook I can see,

And it’s for me, I sit and watch as tears go Bu-u-u-uy...

VeChain (VET) has fallen 12.7% this week, trading at $0.0445, underperforming the broader cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency, has declined by 5.6% to $93,220, with bearish momentum building as it approaches key support at $89,000-$91,000. This decline is largely attributed to tightening monetary conditions in the United States, which continue to weigh on risk assets. Investor confidence is further shaken by significant net outflows from spot BTC-ETFs, which lost $583 million on Wednesday, marking the second-largest single-day outflow on record.

If BTC falls below the critical support level of $89,000-$91,000, VeChain is likely to extend its losses, with prices potentially declining another 10% to $0.0400. A sustained drop in BTC could push VET even lower, towards $0.0300. Conversely, a strong rebound in BTC prices to the $100,000 level could drive VET back up to $0.0500, representing a recovery of approximately 12% from current levels.

Tron (TRX) is surging 5.0% to $0.2584, outperforming the broader crypto market as Bitcoin (BTC) rises 2.5% to $96,450. TRX is testing key resistance for the second time this month after an earlier rally to $0.4490, representing a staggering 118% gain. This rally was fueled by Tron founder Justin Sun's $30 million investment in a crypto project linked to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, potentially signaling the resolution of Sun’s legal challenges.

TRX’s previous attempt to break the $0.3000 resistance ended in a pullback, but a renewed push could overcome this barrier. Sun’s flamboyant marketing strategies continue to make headlines. One notable example was his purchase of a taped banana artwork for $6.2 million, part of the Comedian exhibit, which he ate in a widely publicized stunt—an unconventional move that captured global attention.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq, which are the world's most important trading platforms, end the year at even higher levels than we expected. Lower borrowing costs by leading central banks, as well as a particularly fruitful Q3 earnings season, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales results contributed much to the S&P 500 broad market indicator's climbing to record tops above 6,000, with the Nasdaq 100 index touching the area around 22,000 for the first time ever, compared to nearly 4,770 and 16,667, respectively, at the starting line of 2024. This means the annual performance is nearing 27% for the broad market barometer and 32% for the tech-heavy measure on average. Even if we may halve our potential 2025 percentage growth bets, the output from this moderated inertial scenario would give us 6,850 for the S&P 500 and 25,500 for the Nasdaq index, even though a bolder extrapolation is quite possible.

As an example, the road map made by Capital Economics before Christmas supposed the S&P 500 may finish 2025 at 7,000. This forecast came out despite the researchers' belief that the Federal Reserve's policy could be "a bit less accommodative” than they had previously projected, while mostly attributing the recent one-off slide in the S&P on the next day after the latest meeting of the U.S. financial regulator to a correlating sell-off in public bonds. It appears that the market crowd agrees with this statement, since the bulls have recovered so quickly. Monetary drivers are probably not decisive in this context. What could be more important is the extent of sensitivity of the American economy to trade battles with China and other rival economies under the upcoming Republican administration. Trump 2.0 is a "recipe for volatility" in 2025, says Piper Sandler, as its analysts are feeling the current situation may mirror the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan inherited great and sticky inflationary pressures accompanied by policy dysfunction and surging federal spending. The investment bank marked the risks of recent rate cuts "gone too far, too fast" while tariffs may push prices higher.

Goldman Sachs believes the Trump administration will implement targeted tariffs on imported automobiles and certain imports from China, as well as a 15% corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturers. They expect that the cumulative impact of these policy changes on corporate profits may roughly offset one another on net, so that Goldman projects the S&P 500 index to rise to 6,500 by the end of 2025. Morgan Stanley also stressed its base case for the S&P 500 price target at 6,500 on "earnings growth broadening".

The uncertainty surrounding fiscal policy under Trump is added to chances for a potentially negative impact. And so, the first 100 days of Trump's presidency will reveal a seriousness of his purpose to drive to much lower corporate taxes and a more effective government. However, we note that even the difficult progress of legislative initiatives during Trump’s first term on a stage of a divided Congress did not prevent the stock market from further rallying in 2017-2019, and now the Republicans have a clear majority in both the House and the Senate. As the first post-election phase of the so-called Trump trade has gone, its next phase when a revolutionary Republican agenda is going to be implemented step-by-step in practice will be a good stress test for markets. Yet, a protective mood may be united with residual enthusiasm to provide the bullish dynamics at least in the course of the first half of 2025 when about two-thirds of the way to our annual targets could be passed already. A corporate agenda of strong forecasts' transformation into reality can also be helpful on this stage. But the second half of the year may become more data dependent to create volatility in case of weaker-than-expected policy results.

We should not forget that the large tech corporations with American roots are not so closely related to revenues from the United States, selling a lion's share of their products and services to Asia and countries of the “Global South”. The top techs, led by NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Broadcom etc., could play a quasi safe-haven role, especially as new China's stimulus hopes for a record-breaking 3 trillion Yuan (more than $400 billion) in special treasury bonds for 2025 are going to improve the global market sentiment, starting from giant beneficiaries of this policy. The economic growth in China is a very important factor for the country's domestic consumption, including products by transnational companies and local supply chains. Whether the growth pace in China will be sustainable or not will determine the prospect of achieving our target levels for the Wall Street indexes and its flagships in the second part of the year.