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.

$AT&T(T.US)$ Today had NOTHING to do industry growth. This is very competitive industry - all know that - and if you really read the presentation, they feel they are right on track with cleaning up their mess.
Today was about capitulation. The weak hands that thought they could tough it out - hold fast - are folding after seeing an endless sea of red. Combine that with tax loss selling - what, we're 30 days out for the wash sale rule if they want to get back in next year?
134M shares changed hands today. Average daily volume is around 40M shares.
May not be to the final dump yet - but we're getting close.
I added more shares today - in incremented buys. Sale of the century going on right now.
Long T.

$MasterCard(MA.US)$ Happy shareholder. I like low prices when my company is buying back stock aggressively. Warren Buffett said if you were a net buyer of cheeseburgers over your lifetime would you want high or low prices for them? He said same thing relates to buybacks. If you are holding "indefinitely" it is to your advantage for stock prices to remain as undervalued for as long as possible. The more undervalued the better. Buybacks get more leverage. Ownership share goes up. Earnings per share go up and fewer shares to pay dividends to means dividends can grow even faster.
Long $MasterCard(MA.US)$ and $Visa(V.US)$.

$Microsoft(MSFT.US)$ A CEO selling more than half his shares is a huge signal that the market is at its peak.

$NIO Inc(NIO.US)$ 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.