Widely followed hedge fund manager Dan Niles predicted Wednesday that the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ will decline in 2022, as the Federal Reserve is forced to raise interest rates and stock valuations come further off of all-time highs.
"My favorite investment idea right now is cash," the founder and portfolio manager at Satori Fund told CNBC.
In terms of individual stock picks, Niles pointed to Google's parent company $Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$ $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ and Facebook's parent $Meta Platforms (FB.US)$, which he says provide growth at a reasonable price.
"Those are great names. The names you want to be scared about are the ones that have no earnings and are valued off of revenues," he said. "Those are the stocks that are going to have huge troubles as rates continue to ratchet up."
Niles argued that signs of weakness have been popping up in the equity markets for the past several weeks, with indexes like the Russel 2000 falling dramatically over that span.
"Underneath the surface, there's a lot of damage being done and people are just continuing to crowd into some of the biggest names," he said.
Detailing his prediction for 2022, Niles projected that the Fed will be forced to raise rates to counteract inflationary pressures. This, in turn, will push stocks off of lofty valuation levels, which reached a peak above figures seen during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Meanwhile, for the end of the year, Niles contended that most fund managers are "either window dressing or tax-loss selling," which means that value stocks will have trouble finding support during December.
Niles has long supported FB and GOOGL. See what tech giant he previously labeled "the most overpriced tech stock."

SPAC $Altimeter Growth Corp (AGC.US)$rose 3% in after hours trading after holders approved the deal to take Southeast Asian ride-sharing company Grab public.
Shareholder redemptions were almost 0%, at 0.02%, according to a statement. The transaction is expected to close tomorrow and Grab is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "GRAB" Thusday.
Grab is Southeast Asia's most valuable startup and is set to undergo a merger with Altimeter at a valuation of $40B.
The deal is expected to be one of the largest-ever U.S. equity offering by a Southeast Asian company. A public debut from Grab will offer investors access to a regional consumer market of more than 655M people across countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Earlier this month, Brad Gerstner's SPAC Altimeter Growth announced that that the SEC declared effective the Form F-4 registration statement of Grab Holdings and set the shareholder vote for today.

$NIO Inc (NIO.US)$ has delivered 10,878 vehicles in November 2021, up 105.6% Y/Y, and representing a solid monthly growth of 196.6% M/M from October's deliveries of 3,667 units.
The deliveries consisted of 2,683 ES8s, 4,713 ES6s, and 3,482 EC6s.
Total YTD deliveries reached 80,940 vehicles, up 120.4% Y/Y.
Cumulative deliveries of the ES8, ES6 and EC6 as of November 30, 2021 reached 156,581.
Last month, Citi boosted price target on Nio to $87 from $70 on expectations that the Chinese EV player will nab more market share.

$Ford Motor (F.US)$ Cost to retire debt: $14B
Value of F’s $Rivian Automotive (RIVN.US)$ equity: $12B
Seems straightforward enough, especially since the divorce was expected.

$Rivian Automotive (RIVN.US)$ will have trouble with: mass production, product differentiation, product line expansion and growing out of the niche of high end off roading.
$Tesla (TSLA.US)$ can keep its techie image and still go to a 20-25k car. Rivian can't.
Rivian has no budding Energy division.
Amazon can demand their order be filled using scarce chips and batteries before customer vehicles are made.
And competition.
Tesla wasn't competing against a Tesla so it looked extra easy. Success for Rivian is far from assured.

$Tesla (TSLA.US)$ "In effect, looked at over a six month period, we won’t have delivered any extra cars but we will have spent a lot of money and burned ourselves out to accelerate deliveries in the last two weeks of each quarter."
I'm pretty sure that a large number of Tesla employees who long ago understood that "we won’t have delivered any extra cars" were looking at their CEO thinking: "what an idiot!"
Also is funny to observe that the Tesla cult imbeciles who now agree that this new strategy makes perfect sense, the last quarter were saying that the old strategy made sense.
Whatever felon says, the cult is impressed.

$Alibaba (BABA.US)$ If you calculate the investment in alibaba with the stake munger holds in the daily journal, then it is less than 1% of his net worth. It's not a high conviction pick, and there's a reason it's not in the berkshire portfolio but in the no-one-gives-a-crap daily journal bootleg roobin hood portfolio. Everyone mentioning munger as a pillar of an investment thesis for buying BABA has lost his mind.

The Federal Trade Commission has started an inquiry into recent supply chains disruptions and is ordering nine large retailers, wholesalers and consumer goods suppliers to provide the agency information.
The orders are being sent to $Walmart (WMT.US)$, $Amazon (AMZN.US)$, $The Kroger (KR.US)$, $Procter & Gamble (PG.US)$, $Tyson Foods (TSN.US)$, $The Kraft Heinz (KHC.US)$, C&S Wholesale Grocers, Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. and McLane Co., according to an FTC release. The companies will have 45 days from the date they received the order to respond.
The FTC is issuing the orders under a special section of the FTC Act, which authorizes the agency to conduct "wide-ranging" studies that don't have a specific law enforcement purpose.
The orders require the companies to detail the primary factors disrupting their ability to obtain, transport and distribute their products; the impact these disruptions are having in terms of delayed and canceled orders and increased costs and prices.
The FTC also is requiring the companies to provide internal documents regarding the supply chain disruptions.
Yesterday, Black Friday sales growth reverses for first time - Adobe Analytics.
Earlier, Walmart and Kohl's are tipped to have outperformed peers on Black Friday.

What I find ironic is that $Ford Motor (F.US)$ is financing most of that million/year EV production with profits from ICE vehicles. While at the same time Ford's ICE business is being valued at $0.

IMO, $Qualcomm (QCOM.US)$ is the juggernaut of the chip industry. I have invested accordingly. They spend a lot on R&D and they delivery great results. They are making smart acquisitions too. AAPL has and always will be a issue, but APPL needs to pay to play. The courts settle that issue.
I'm very long QCOM and happy to be so...$ cost average into QCOM, unless there is a correction...then buy all that you can. This company is a national treasure!