it is 5:00 a.m. hoar at cnbc global headquarters and here's your top five at 5:00 stocks holding onto their record breaking rally with the s&p notching the 70th record close of the year. talk about hitting the skids, didi is under pressure after the latest figures and crackdown from beijing with tensions on the rise between russia and ukraine, president biden is stepping in with a call to russia's vladimir putin today. fred camp is here to weigh in. first it was samsung now

another global chip maker is warning of a slow down amid lockdowns and the outbreak in china. jim o'neil weighing in on that and the risks to global growth and later, biogen throwing cold water on what could have been a massive m&a deal. it's thursday, december 30th, 2021, you're watching "worldwide exchange" here on cnbc good morning, i'm seema mody in for brian sullivan at this hour great ton with you today here's how stock futures are looking on this thursday morning. this after the s&p 500 posted the 70th record close of the year nasdaq higher by 45, dow jones up 25 points yesterday was trailing 1995 when it saw 77 record closes in a

single year. according to cnbc's robert hum with 70 record closes over the course of 2021's 250 trading days that means the s&p has recorded a record close 28% of the time, that's a pace of every four days. a quick sector check that tells you where we're seeing the gains, health care, real estate, materials, consumer staples and utilities. and we continue to watch the story in oil remember, for the year, energy is the best performing sector right now oil getting back some of the gains, wti down about .6%, at $76. and crypto currencies have been volatile, bitcoin trading at 46,815, down about 1% right now. a mixed puicture overnight in

asia that saw the nikkei down about .4% for the year for a long haul investor looking at this, the nikkei has closed at the highest level since the bubble era of 1989 europe is getting started, opened a couple of hours ago and we are higher with the france ftse 100 and german dax in the green. let's check this morning's other top stories. kristina is here >> good morning, seema so samsung right now is denying a report from the korean economic daily that it is in talks to buy biogen, the report citing unnamed sources said a deal could value biogen could value it at $20 billion, they currently partner on drug developments and as of september have five fda approved products here in the united states. and it keeps getting worse for

didi, out with the latest results said third quarter revenue dropped 5%, this as chinese regulators step up the investigation into the company while forcing it to takedown several of its apps from chinese app stores shares down 5% right now in the premarket. just weeks after being added to a blacklist, chinese artificial intelligence firm sensetime went public overnight, shares surging on the debut, rising 11% above their i.p.o. price after opening higher by 23%. u.s. regulators allow the facial recognition technology has been used to help suppress and assimilate minority ethnic groups inside china, accusations the company denies >> big story there, thank you. back to the broader market which have had a great year, the s&p 500 is leading the pack up more than 28% with two days left

in the year. the index is also set to pull off a rare fete, outperforming the dow and nasdaq in the same year, just the fourth time since 1990 that's happened and the first time since 2005. the s&p has benefitted from two specific sectors this year, technology and financials. in fact, financials, poised for the best annual return since 1997 let's get more on insight on where the markets may be headed with brrobert teeter. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> as we showed you there, two sector it is playing a powerful role and really leading the gains, technology and financials what do you make of those two sectors? >> it's a very interesting take on what's happened in the last year, one of the reasons why it's so important to maintain balance in portfolios, financials falling on the value side of the equation and technology on the growth side. and it's been a very interesting year and earnings have been the

key driver, in my opinion, for all advances across equities and both sectors have seen strong earning growth so no surprise to see them at the top of the roster >> if you bought them january 1st, do you sell or do you think these are sectors that will continue to june lock gains for investors? >> i think that balance is still warranted for next year. we'll continue on the roller coaster with the economy a lot of tradeoffs going on in terms of economic balance, inflation, supply chain, margins all of these things. but when investors look through it at the end of the day, the metrics is earnings. so the sectors that can generate strong earnings growth is where the quality is. >> financials are correlated to what's happening in the bond market can you help explain to me, we had the fed say we're getting three hikes next year yet the 10 year yield stuck below 1.5%.

>> that's been the conundrum of the year we had the fed and inflation rising i think there are two things going on one is that i estimate there's somewhere between 40 and 50 bases points of yield suppression from the covid fear people are allocating bonds because of the fears of covid that keep coming and going when that dissipates i expects rates higher you have strong demand from pension funds and overseas buyers, particularly at levels above 1.5% i think ceiling will be around 2% the fed gets some progress in rate expectations next year but i don't think we'll go higher than the high ones and cap out around 2%. >> you think 2% is your target what changes should investors make with their portfolios stick with dividend winners? what changes or things should investors be thinking about right now? >> i think that continued

balance is critically important. i think one area that's been overlooked a bit has been on the small caps side. typically in an election year small caps outperform, some of that is because of a focus on domestic activity we'll have that in a big way this year as we focus on getting folks back to jobs and manage some of the damage that occurred in the covid years. i think that will favor small caps, in addition to that i think the balance is important, investment in productivity and efficiency gains continue. that leads to the technology side and i think some of the cyclicals will continue to recover as the last pieces of the economy come back online. >> one of the stories was the meme stocks, funny enough a lot of stocks are holding onto some big gains for the year amc up over 1200%, do you think that continues as retail participation seems to be only growing in the equity market >> i don't think that will necessarily continue much longer though it's always very

difficult to call a top in these things that become poplar. there's a lot of investor interest there it's great to see participation in financial markets again but i think when you pull back through the layers of the onion there there isn't a lot there in terms of earnings growth while it may continue a bit longer, we don't think that's a place folks should overstay the welcome. >> you can argue the two companies have done a good job relaying their story to wall street robert, great discussion, thanks for joining us robert teeter. >> thank you. when we come back, trouble in the skies as the cancellations continue to rack up, yeah, again. now one major airline is taking it a step further and trimming the schedule through january. >> plus president biden and vladimir putin set to peek

we have fred kempe here. and later, lockdowns in china, u.s. inflation, tech v valuations we cover it all jim o'neill is in the house. don't go away.

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passengers a head start on adjusting their plans. this as the industry as a whole continues to struggle with the omicron surge. collectively canceling more than 1,000 flights a day since sunday with at least 900 flights already scrapped today cancellations racking up and so do the equity losses one of two s&p 500 industry groups lower on the week joining me with more the former pan am ceo, david panmiller. good to have you on. you're the former ceo of a major airline, how long do you think these cancellations can last >> good morning and thank you, seema. as i mentioned in an earlier segment with brian before thanksgiving we'll see this happen through the holidays for sure, and that was before this aggressive covid situation happened with omicron. and that's going to go through

the first quarter. i think, if i may interject, i'll throw a couple of numbers really quickly december 5th it was 149 cancellations, on the 26th there was 627. right now there's probably about 8,000 flights flying around the u.s. as we speak i think the problem is as follows. number one, obviously the aggressiveness of the new variant. number two, the fact that everybody is getting tested. so what happened before, not as many people were getting tested. once you get tested, it sort of creates a domino effect within the industry and these folks work together, it's like an nfl team, they're in the same place a lot. the pilots have to be in the right place at the right time. that's hard. there's different equipment types, testing impact, the reserves are probably depleted, most of the major carriers have reserves at the airports to cover somebody who calls in had

sick but the problem is the reserves are also calling in many sick. then you have the connection hub problems and i don't -- just one guy forecasting the future, i think what jetblue did and what the airlines have to do, as hard as it is, is to get ahead of it, face the reality, because, you know, all of a sudden you're canceling -- the average performance is 99%, just to give you -- >> it's interesting to hear you -- >> it's 94% right now. >> it's interesting to hear you dissect the problems because there are reasons why this is happening, you have holiday travel, the staffing issues, plus testing that also being a big issue for travel in general. at lo of us planning to go outside the u.s., getting the pcr test in time to make that flight because you need it 24 hours in advance, a different story. what happens to prices, david? is this going to impact or discourage americans from traveling and if so how much do you expect prices to come down

from here? >> let me make one comment i'm in spain, came here yesterday from dublin. had to fill out all kinds of forms, went through two lines and if you didn't have the two vaccines you weren't getting into spain with reference to your other observation, it's -- your future is going to be tough for the next three months. and what was your other question >> prices. for those of us who are booking travel, do you expect better deals in the coming future >> everybody comes back to pricing, right do i think that's going to happen absolutely pricing is a mechanism to stimulate traffic, right that's supply and demand demand is high, prices are higher demand is low, prices are lower. economics 101. but what you also want to do, it's done by city pair, it's selective, not across the board stuff, you have a couple of new

competitors floating around in the united states that are going to be aggressive on pricing. the answer is question, there will be pricing incentives yes the first quarter is slow, depending, there's certain regions the first quarter is strong because of the weather but for the most part it's a slow quarter so you would see better pricing. i would be astute if i were someone surfing the web about what that means and the other problem, if i can quickly interject, because of all this -- people on one hand are afraid to fly because the rules are going to change. >> right. >> the rules have changed so many times it's like a ouija board. the most important ingredient is to say book this, i'm not going to penalize you, you cancel the money is in the bank, that's smart and i'm sure they're going to do that. >> great point, fluid situation to say the least, you can see this also reflected in airline stocks it's good to have you on, thank

you for joining us from spain, david banmiller. still on deck, your 2022 playbook and if financials can go for a repeat in the year ahead after booking some massive gains. enough? -no... arthritis. here. aspercreme arthritis. full prescription-strength? reduces inflammation? thank the gods. don't thank them too soon. kick pain in the aspercreme.

president biden is set to hold another call with russian president vladimir putin this afternoon amid ongoing tensions between russia and ukraine the white house saying it's been

speaking with leaders across europe regarding the situation as russia continues to amass tens of thousands of troops near the border let's bring in fred kempe. he's been tracking the story closely. good morning to you. from what i understand, president putin requested the call with president biden, is that your understanding and what do you think he wants? >> this is my understanding. it follows a call they had in december he wants to ratchet up the pressure he thinks with having more talks with biden he's adding more pressure by january they'll have 100,000 troops on the border with ukraine. a u.s. spokesperson yesterday talked about it as a crisis that's been bad for a while and has the potential for getting worse. so putin's reason to do this is saying, look, i mean business. i need an assurance that nato will not put any troops on

ukraine's territory. i need insurance that georgia and ukraine will never be members of nato, these are two things they can never do from biden's side they want to de-escalate the crisis, push back from what could be the worst crisis in europe since the end of the cold war. >> a great set up for this discussion on where things stand right now. you're a foreign policy expert, you analyze the behavior of state leaders across the world, what's your read on this is it inevitable that russia regains control of ukraine or will they bow down to pressure from the u.s. and european allies >> let's draw back and look at 2020 as a whole from the biden administration standpoint. it's not just russian troops on the edge of ukraine that the u.s. is facing they're facing a ratcheting up of pressures of china on taiwan. they're facing an iran that's crossing towards the threshold of a nuclear weapon, 60%

enrichment of uranium, 4% is all that's allowed under the treaty. israel is not going to sit back and watch that happen. so you could have the most stressful geopolitical year really in the last 30 years facing the biden administration. the biden administration has to decide how is it going to navigate all of this part of the reason it's happening is i think president xi and president putin are testing the biden administration they've seen what they -- what they see as weakness in the afghanistan withdrawal they've seen what they interpret as indecision. they're pretty sure the u.s. isn't willing to undertake military action to defend taiwan or ukraine so i think you could see a year of tests in had 2022 of the obama administration >> that's interesting because you have president biden's polling continuing to decline and some would argue following afghanistan this administration could really use a foreign policy win how aggressive do you expect biden to be when it comes to

russia next year >> i think he'll be aggressive in terms of sanctions, should russia cross a line and invade ukraine further. i mean, invade ukraine, they've already done that in crimea. in 2014 when crimea was taken, the obama administration left a lot of sanctions on the shelf, didn't go nearly as far as it could have and you've seen a lot of interagency action over the holidays preparing a much tougher set of approaches. on the other hand, the russians can be quite sure that the u.s. itself won't take military action what it said it could do, it would give ukraine more means to defend itself and should it take action in ukraine that is also said to putin and the russians that one would ratchet up the support for nato allies on the border of ukraine, poland, the baltic states, other things.

it would change the whole post cold war nature of europe to a place that's really trying to go into a new, modern world to one breaking down into old spheres of geopolitical influence that we had during the soviet period. >> we had to study up on asia at the height of the u.s./china issues and now it seems we have to dig deep on russia and all things europe. thank you for joining us >> just one other thing, this is happening at a time of internal domestic weakness. so it's external stress at a time of domestic internal po larization in the united states. we haven't faced anything where those two come together. >> that's a concerning and fascinating revelation fred thank you again. >> thank you. let's get a check on this morning's other headlines. phillip mena in new york with the latest >> good morning. a verdict has been reached in the sex trafficking trial of ghislaine maxwell. the jury concluded that she is

guilty on five of six counts, including sex trafficking of a minor, which could get her 40 years in prison. a sentencing date has not been scheduled but is likely months away turning to alabama where severe weather whipped through officials say the damage is likely caused by a tornado, roofs ripped off buildings and power lines are down across the town according to the police chief, several people were rescued after being inside a pizza shop. >> this year will end without a verdict in the elizabeth holmes trial, the jury failed to reach a decision after six days of deliberations. they'll resume monday, january 3 r3rd. the founder has pleaded not guilty, facing 20 years in prison if convicted. covid reeked havoc on the

bowl season. but a shootout in texas between oregon and oklahoma. sooners up by 27 at the half the ducks would fight back, three touchdowns in the third quarter, ultimately the deficit too much to overcome oklahoma wins the alamo bowl 47-32. the team wearing orange fared well at the cheese it bowl clemson capitalized in the third quarter as they clinch the win over iowa state. and maryland's offense gained nearly 500 yards in a 54-6 blowout straight ahead, why didi's recent headwinds are not scaring away our next guests

why she says the stock is a buy at these levels. stick around, we're right back

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investors getting settle to party like it's 1995 as stocks look to keep a record breaking rally alive. trouble in china as a chip maker said it's adjusting production in light of new covid-19 lockdowns jim o'neill is here with the impact it could have supply chain and global growth ahead. tracking the big bank

breakout of 2021 and if it can repeat what it saw this year it's thursday, december 30, 2021 you're watching "worldwide exchange" on cnbc. welcome back, thank you for joining us today, i'm seema mody in for brian sullivan. here's how stock futures are looking. it's green across the screen, nasdaq higher by 39 points, s&p up about 4 this morning's action coming after the s&p posted the 70th record close of the year, the most since 1995 when the s&p ended at a record 77 times in a single year. helping drive stocks higher yesterday, at least 75 s&p stocks hitting all time highs, names like mcdonald's, costco, j&b. with yesterday's gain the santa claus rally looks to still be

intact with three trading days set to go. let's get a check on some of this morning's top stories kristina is back with us again >> good morning. dr. anthony fauci, though, is p p predicting the latest wave of covid-19 pandemic may hit the peak in the u.s. by the end of january. fauci speaking with cnbc yesterday as new cases hit the highest level since the pandemic began. >> it certainly peaked pretty quickly in south africa, went up almost vertically and turned around quickly i would imagine, given the size of our country and the diversity of vaccination versus not vaccination, that it likely will be more than a couple of weeks probably by the end of january, i would think. >> dr. fauci, adding lockdowns are not being considered for now. elon musk spacex raising $337 million in new funding according to a filing yesterday.

the company which counts alphabet and fidelity among investors hit $100 billion in valuation following a secondary share sale in october. spacex has raised more than 1 billion in financing since april. and shares of evergrande sinking again, after the chinese real estate giant failed to pay interest on international bonds to investors payment payments totaling $225 million due this week. >> a story that keeps giving thank you. sticking with china where omicron continues to wreak havoc on key choke points in the global economy in the past 24 hours, supplier micron said some parts will be hit by the lockdown. one aimed at stemming the country's biggest outbreaks of the year the chips are used in had data

centers across the orld. the news comes hours after samsung issued a similar statement that it's adjusting production at two key facilities to deal with the lockdowns and thinner staff levels these developments beg the question about vaccines and the ability to prevent strict lockdowns. joining me now is jim o'neill. good morning to you. >> good morning to you, seema. nice to see you. >> great to see you. what are your thoughts on another wave of covid and how countries around the world are responding, specifically china, vaccines are supposed to help, and they've given us more help but it's not stopping some countries like china from locking down. >> i wish i knew the answer to that out of endless uncertain tirs going into the end of the year, it's one of the biggest

we're aware of but yet we know so little. i think on the specific of your question about china, as with a number of other issues about china, for the first time in over 30 years following the country closely, i'm not sure if their strategy is right. you know, this particular latest variant, omicron, is spreading so easily. we have nearly 200,000 cases here in the uk as of yesterday, which is huge. france even more and so, if it's in china, then without severe lockdowns, they're not going to be able to stop it from spreading and, you know, the same approach, which is rather encouraging, having just caught what dr. fauci said. same approach today to what was applied in wuhan 21 months ago doesn't make a lot of sense to me given that china has already got

challenges with its cyclical growth and structural growth i would have thought the chinese have to possibly rethink but it looks like a leadership that doesn't like to rethink, at least publically too much. but it can only clearly harm chinese growth itself and china's important marginal impact on world growth, especially with supply chains as you featured. >> covid made a mess out of inflation expectations there are some who say this is transitory it will pass once we hit the first quarter. others say this wave of omicron, still highly transmissible, less severe, will have an impact on growth and impact the supply chain issues we've seen play out this quarter. >> i'm open minded it seemed to me a year ago the big concern, last year -- or

what is now this year still, would be that growth would recover sharply and we would have some fears about inflation. and, of course, that's exactly what's going on. but now that we're in this position, it's not obvious to me that we have necessarily got a permanent rise in inflation. some important measures of inflation expectations notably in the u.s., i always follow the university of michigan long-term one closely. they're quite stable and the markets don't show signs of being overly worried about it, which doesn't necessarily mean anything but, of course, sometimes it does. so i think my dreadful answer is i think we'll have to wait and see. but i can only at the same time, see why there are some grounds for worrying about inflation we have an extremely accommodative monetary policy,

fiscal policy has been hugely expansive and we have supply chain disruptions and waging are picking up in some places, and indeed linked to the complications of current life almost deliberately in many countries as a result of policies to try to reduce income inequality, which socially and the long term benefit of the capitalist system is probably necessary but could add to inflation. >> i'm hearing you say inflationary pressures will exist into 2021 as will the ongoing supply chain shortage. what does that mean for big tech here in the u.s. some technology companies are sitting on big gains this year. if the supply chain shortage continues does that put pressure on some of the biggest semiconductor companies out there? >> the way that big tech is just thrown off repeated challenges, may be because it can thrive in so many environments,

particularly one of covid existing raises the possibility that perhaps the ongoing surprise is they just continue to do so well i suspect at the end of the day, something rather basic is going to be important ultimately and that is the monetary policy. we've seen episodes over the past 15 months really where markets start to fear about higher bond yields in a much more aggressive monetary policy and the tech sector tends to lose out, relative to cyclicals and financials so if inflation does rise and, more importantly, if inflation expectations start to rise sharply and central banks start to panic, i would have guessed -- famous last words -- i would guess that tech would go through a tough time but as we see, as evidenced by this call we're having on zoom,

technology is keeping the world moving around as well as possible despite the staggering disruption to our lives. >> benefits from stay-at-home, reopening. set the scene, 2022, biggest story in europe? >> you know, we've got some further important elections in europe coming up and there's a number of issues that are also there persistently in europe, france in particular that often likes to see itself as the leader of the eu, and macron so ambitious in this area will he manage to get a second term and given that we have germany that's moving away from merkel, does this mean that -- a more, let's call it, move towards the united states of europe, and in addition you have got the whole issue of the italian presidency and whether draghi can continue this

successful brief period of being the prime minister all these things are there on top of everything to do with omicron and covid and inflation, et cetera, et cetera so huge number of uncertainties. but it -- if we were to work on the naive assumption that omicron, perhaps naive, that omicron while it is spreading faster is much weaker than the previous variants, it's not impossible that we are in the early stages of finally shifting this to being an endemic health challenge from pandemic, in which case the european economies will come roaring back because the european policy makers have signed up recently it's not impossible by the end of january we're talking about some kind of accelerating boom again, at least in the economic cycle. >> ending to an optimistic note. always a pleasure to you on, thank you for joining us. >> okay.

happy new year. r e nke ng up the big bull cas fothbas heading into 2022. our all-star panel weighing in when we return

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the index. joining us for a look at where these stocks go in 2022 is girard cassidy and marty mosby. great to have you on, gentlemen. marty i start with you, if we are entering an environment which the fed accelerates the pace that interest rates move higher here, what does that mean for the broader financials >> interest rates are going to be the catalyst for how they perform. the cycle we went through is not traditional at all, up the cli a recession, the banks do poorly on credit this time because of the stimulus, there's been no credit pressures except for some increase and release we went through up in 2020 and down in 2021 so as interest rates go up or don't go up, it will determine the fate of this group, because that's really what's left on the

table is what happens to interest rates. >> girard, what's top of mind for you when looking at financials >> i agree with marty that the interest rate outlook is critical to the outlook for the performance of the bank stocks in 2022. especially short-term interest rates. what we've seen recently is that the stocks tend to move with the long end of the yield curve, the 10 year bond curve and that is i think going to give way in 2022 to the front end of the curve in the fed funds rate if you go back to the last tightening cycle in 2016 to 2018 as the short end of the curve went up, the bank stocks did well the other key factor is loan growth that is another driving force in 2022. we're starting to see the weekly data, the hh data as it's referred to from the federal reserve that comes out on friday afternoons is showing some nice increases recently, particularly in commercial and industrial

lending which we think will be the driver for total loan growth in 2022. >> differentiating between the big banks versus regional players, where would you put your money to work in 2022 >> we're looking at two factors one is the so-called asset sensitivity of the bank's balance sheet. that's the benefit they would receive that marty and i are talking about with higher interest rates that's one way of playing the bigger banks, names like bank of america and wells fargo are asset sensitive. then to play a specific strategy on the regional names are to own the banks that are big commercial and industrial lenders, key corp. or fifth third, these names should benefit from the increased loan demandcoming from an economy i 2022 that should continue to grow at above average levels relative to the last 10 or 15 years. >> incredible comeback when you look at a name like wells fargo, up 60% this year is there more room to run?

>> again that's a turn around story that has a lot of other issues driving it. you know, so when you look at wells fargo in particular, there still is some head room with valuation because there's so much catch up that its loss value relative to the group in the last five years when they're dealing with issues. as they come out the other side, that gives you something else besides just interest rates you can count on going back to loan growth what we're going to see is this inflation that we've seen across the asset classes, home prices, auto prices, commercial real estate it's almost baking in the cake what girard is talking about is that loan growth is going to start to percolate so that's going to be there. but again the cycle between '16 and '18 was positive but between '12 and '16 waiting for the fed to move was a holding pattern of fits and starts, they would go up and come back down for the

banks. so it's how the fed moves and how quickly that determines 2022 >> which ceo has managed the pandemic the best in your opinion? >> i would say that j.p. morgan's jamie dimon has done a good job as has brian moynihan at bank of america two large banks have managed th pandemic very well. >> and j.p. morgan up 24% year-to-date we'll leave it there, thank you both for joining me today. great to have you both on. >> thanks. >> you're very well. welcome. on deck, breaking down the buying opportunities in health care and the beaten down i.p.o. space. and if you haven't already follow our podcast if you missed "worldwide exchange" check us out on apple, spotify or other podcast apps. we will be right back.

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welcome back news of that possible biogen buyout helping lift what's been a lackluster few months for the bio tech sector while they may end with a slight gain, not the same for other large names in bio tech look at blue bird, saripta, ion down about 40% despite weakness, my next guest says it's a buy. we tend to fixate on the vaccine manufacturers, covid testing, but there are opportunities in bio tech, which names do you like best? >> there are so many

opportunities. health care has underperformed the market this year however you had certain names, lab corp., quest, thermo fisher, these guys have done incredibly well moderna is up over 100%. i say you cut the winners and buy the losers what are some of the losers? exact sciences this is a company that's a leader in cancer screening they make cologuard, a no noninvasive test for colon cancer the stock has been whip sawed going up and down from a high of 150 in february down to 72 it has depressed revenue growth and somewhat high fixed cost here's why, they hire 450 new sales people inside to the sales staff, they can't get in front of doctors because of covid. zoom doesn't quite do it so the company, however, has got

some big news coming up in if january. they're going to unveil cologuard 2.0 in february, in q2 they'll release data on a new cancer blood >> it's down about 24% over the past two years another beaten down area if you will, which is i.p.o.s, a lot of names with high consumer interest like sweetgreens and all birds it's fascinating to see how much they have dropped since the debut. i believe you still see opportunity in some of the names. give us your top pick. >> bumble. it's a women's centered dataing app. coupang of south korea legal zoom is another one. you no longer have to pay big money to write a will, hit a high of 40, now it's 16. didi, the uber of the people's

republic of china. china has been throwing a tantrum playing hard ball with the publicly trading companies but if you are a long-term buy and holding investor this is a name you have to think about it reminds me of facebook back in the day facebook went public in 2012 went out at 38, got to 18 and didn't look back so i'm excited about some of these names. two-thirds of the companies have underperformed, the new i.p.o.s. >> you like to go for the beaten down names a lot of people would argue didi is a no touch story with china and the regulatory concerns. stepping back, macro, here in the u.s. covid increasing about 60% this week. thoughts on how omicron affects broader sentiment? >> i'm going to be positive on omicron. you think about the fed tapering, the fed raising rates. i think the fed is dovish, and any sign of trouble and omicron

is trouble, is going to make the fed back down, because think about it, omicron is is going to affect restaurants, the service sector people are staying home, airlines canceling flights so i think omicron is going to cause the fed to -- the fed is looking for a reason to stay the course and i think omicron is going to do that. short of that, we're going to have pent up demand in 2022. the consumer is tired of being at home. the consumer is tired of not being able to go out and spend so i think anything now is only going to set up 2022 for pent-up demand the problem with this, however, is that you're going to have inflation because you still have supply chain shocks, labor shortages. i'm bullish for 2022 >> what's the biggest risk for next year? quickly. >> i'm going to go with the financials i don't understand why the financials are so strong tepid loan growth.

they have lots of deposits they can't put to work. i would stay away from the financials, big winners this year, take your money and run. >> great stuff wide ranging, thanks for joining us today a quick look at u.s. futures right now, pointing to a higher open with the nasdaq up about 38 points after the dow and s&p ended at a record. anyofor joining me on "worldwide exchange. "squawk box" is next moving is a handful. no kidding! fortunately, xfinity makes moving easy. easy? -easy?

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good morning, daily covid cases surging to a new record as nearly half a million new infections were reported yesterday. details straight ahead stocks shrugging off the bad covid news so far at least the s&p logged another record close and futures are slightly higher what's moving right now.

and didi shares are falling. revenue plunged after the chinese government cracked down on the company it is thursday, december the 30th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with wilfred frost. joe and andrew are both off today. it's good to have you here, though, will >> thank you for being here. >> i saw you past 6:45 the last couple of nights, too, so you're the every man all over the place. we appreciate it. >> it's one of those busy weeks isn't it, it's all in. great to get the extra air time, frankly. >> and it's good to see yo