저자: TomLee · 외국인
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Fed가 9월 금리인하 재개 예정이며, 과거 1998·2024년 사례상 4분기 주식 강세가 기대된다는 주장. ISM 제조업 50 하회 29개월 기록 등을 근거로 금융·산업재·소형주 확산 랠리를 전망하고 IWM(소형주)을 제시. 유동성 사이클이 시장을 주도하며, 2026~27년 기업 채무 차환과 AI 설비투자에 따른 현금흐름 악화를 리스크로 언급. 비트코인은 유동성·M2 기반 거시 프레임 안에서 언급되나 구체적 가격 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
I I think it's normal to expect some profit taking. I mean, we just made all-time highs and uh you know, it is the weekend, but to me uh you know, we know that since April 2025, any of these pullbacks have been really shallow and you know, next week, we know that there's something very important to watch and I'm sure a lot of people are going to be hesitant, but we know that that ultimately it's a good thing when the Fed cuts.
I'm still bullish on US stocks um in the final few months of 2025 because there's two things that are positive catalysts. Tom Lee starts with the Federal Reserve. His central thesis is simple. The Fed is about to resume its cutting cycle, and that matters a lot. Looking back at history, the Fed has almost never resumed a rate cutting cycle in the fall.
In fact, it's only happened twice before. once in 1998 and again in 2024. In both of those instances, the stock market didn't just hold steady, it boomed in the fourth quarter. ; I'm still bullish on US stocks um in the final few months of 2025 because there's two things that are positive catalysts.
The first is that the Fed is going to resume its cutting cycle. And um we looked back. So in if you look at the entire history of monetary policy, the Fed has never resumed a cutting cycle in the fall. This it's only happened two other times in history. And you're expecting this year as well. Uh yes.
Yeah. It's uh the Fed has signaled. So this would be the third time. The first time was 1998. Yeah. The second time was 2024. And this is the third time. In all the two prior cases, the stock market boomed in the fourth quarter because the Fed has been on pause and then they're finally cutting. Oh. The second um is that the um ma business confidence, the ISM manufacturing,
yeah, actually has been below 50 now for 29 months. Yeah. It will probably recover back to 50 once the Fed starts cutting. That's the longest stretch of the ISM below 50 in history. So that's really good for industrials and financials and small caps. So I think that this fall is a is a really broadening of the stock market rally
where the banks and the industrials and the small caps are going to do as well as large cap tech. When the Fed resumes its cutting cycle, they have a lot of room to cut rates further because the Fed's Fed funds is at 4 and a half% right now and inflation is probably closer to 2 or 2 and a half%. So, it's the real interest rate is extremely tight.
So, I think there's a lot of room to cut. That will take a few years. I I think this is really bullish for stocks. Just really quickly, Tom, what do you make of the pullback in futures? Again, all three indices hit record highs. It's a very slight pullback, but what do you think the catalyst is for the pullback this morning?
Well, you know, I I think it's normal to expect some profit taking. I mean, we just made all-time highs and uh you know, it is the weekend, but to me, you know, we know that since April 2025, any of these pullbacks have been really shallow. And you know, next week, we know that there's something very important to watch.
And I'm sure a lot of people are going to be hesitant, but we know that that ultimately it's a good thing when the Fed cuts. You know, we have a lot of people in general that are concerned about overconentration in the market. Ironically enough, we had a guest on earlier, Julia Herman from uh New York Life that was saying the concentration was a good thing, but the valuation of this market's been a concern for a lot of people, but your word of the day is undervalued.
What's undervalued right now? Um, Frank, I think Oracle surging 41% after they report earnings tells me that AI is an undervalued sector. Because how else do you explain a stock that is as large as Oracle gaining as much as it is unless it shows investors are really underestimating the future growth of AI?
Just to be clear, what's undervalued? Are we talking about the chip sector? Are we talking about software? Are we talking about the hyperscalers? Are we talking about the Mag 7? or is it everything in your mind? Well, I I wouldn't want to be too specific because, you know, AI is still a five or 10 year story and so I wouldn't want to be trying to drill this down into a really narrow set.
I think AI as a theme is continually underestimated because I think a lot of people think this is money being spent without return. Oracle is showing you that there's a lot of future growth. So, with that in mind, Tom, your pick for us today is the IWM ETF, a small cap ETF. If AI is undervalued, why aren't you saying your pick for us today is a Palunteer, an Oracle, um a Vistra that helps power some of these data centers?
Why are you going to the small caps? Well, uh a couple reasons. First of all, Frank, it's because exactly as I said, I wouldn't want to try to pick a slice of AI to to talk about being undervalued. But if we think AI is undervalued, what's even more undervalued is small caps because that's been held at bay because the Fed has not been cutting rates.
Fed's been on hold all year and for the first time since last year, the Fed is cutting in September. A September cut after a pause has only happened in 1998 and 2024 and both times are good periods for small cap stocks. So a question to you though, the same weakness in the economy and the job market that's leading the Fed to cut, doesn't that directly impact small caps?
Well, I think that we want to not be like oversimplistic and and thinking about this. Number one, what is the Fed going to try to accomplish uh by cutting, especially if they're worried about the employment market weakening? They want to get the ISM to actually go back above 50. They want corporates to start hiring.
They want businesses to be confident. So, this rate cut is not just a, you know, a symbolic cutting of interest rates for mortgages. It is really an attempt by the Fed to get the economy to grow again, to actually increase the job market. That's really bullish for small caps. So why if AI is undervalued does Tom Lee recommend small caps instead of AI specific stocks like Palunteer or Oracle?
His answer is strategic. AI may be a long-term growth engine, but small caps are even more undervalued in the near term. They've been held back all year by the Fed's pause and historically when the Fed resumes cutting in September, small caps perform especially well. Yes, some argue that weaker growth could hurt small caps, but Tom Lee explains that Fed cuts are designed to boost confidence, lift ISM above 50, and spur hiring, as you know, is that journey to the nexus of understanding between macro crypto and the exponential age of technology.
Several years ago, I developed a thesis called the Everything Code. The Everything Code is my all-encompassing macro framework that I've built over the last 35 years. that that builds upon the giant demographic trends, how that leads to a growth in debt where the entire western world plus China and Japan have been involved because of the same demographics issues and how that that debt is managed by the debasement of currency and liquidity in order to roll the debt and how the debt is cyclical.
It's generally between a threeyear and fiveyear time horizon and why that causes the economy and markets to be cyclical including crypto and how to navigate it and how to get forward read on it and a forward read on it. We use things like the global macro investor financial conditions index leads by 9 months and we also use the global macro investor uh global liquidity index which leads by about 6 months.
the and those things in combination with M2 and our other indicators give us a really decent probabilistic read on how things play out. Now, we are kind of pioneers of this whole structure, but there's one other person that you know well who also looks at the world through a similar lens. Now, it's not quite the same, but he's truly a pioneer um in in this kind of debt cycle analysis and global liquidity.
Well, the answer is we're late. It's not inflating downwards yet. We're still in an upswing, but you know, we got to remember here that the liquidity cycle is what, 34 months old. Um that's pretty mature u as things go. Uh we got to be thinking of what could be the endgame. there's no I don't think there's anything on the horizon that could necessarily disrupt things but you know there are clearly problems building and I think you know as we look into 2026 and probably beyond I mean there are factors to think about and to my mind I mean the two biggest factors I mean number one is that there's a lot of debt that's got to be refinanced out there because debt was effectively termed out during the COVID crisis large amounts when interest rates were zero And that's coming back into markets to be refinanced really from sort of later this year but through 2627.
And the other thing we must you know remember is that you know strong economies don't always have strong financial markets. And the fact is that you've got uh US tech companies currently investing what is it a billion dollars a day in IT and infrastructure. And you know over the course of a year or so, couple of years that's going to take about a trillion dollars out of markets uh out of out of money markets.
I mean these these are big amounts. So these companies may be seeing decent profits growth but their cash flows are really plunging and that's got to be a problem uh for financial markets uh in particular. So let's dig in a little bit to the to the slowness of this cycle versus others from from our work is like normally the liquidity cycle peaks around the business cycle peak.
you know, they're all, you know, related. And the business cycle has been super low. If you look at the ISM, it's been below 50. And the the strongest correlation to that is rates have been too high for too long. And that has kept the ISM lower than expected, which means it feels like it's elongated the liquidity cycle.
So, that's one factor that I'm looking at. The other one is the fact that they've been shoving everything into the bills market and not refing, you know, in let's say the 5year sector. that's kept this this you know cyclicality um and I don't know if that structure is changing things because it requires ongoing liquidity as opposed to cyclical liquidity so firstly the business cycle and interest rates and then you know whether the structure of where they've been issuing makes a difference.
Yeah. Well, I think the I mean the first thing is we don't seem to have a business cycle and if you look at uh almost any economy since the COVID crisis uh everything's kind of flatlined. So there's no obvious business cycle around and you know we can conjecture as to why that may be. Is it because fiscal policies dominant whatever but the fact is that there's none.
There is a liquidity cycle and that seems to be paramount. And the interesting point is which I'm sure you attest is that you know financial markets are responded not to the real economy they responded to the liquidity cycle. That that's what's going on. So we need to understand this like it or not.
I mean it's become the paramount issue in markets as far as we can see. So I think that's that's true. Lee's analysis also fits into a larger macro framework. He notes that the economy has been unusually flat since the co crisis with no obvious business cycle. Instead, what drives markets now is liquidity, the flow of money and credit.
Financial markets are responding not to the real economy, but to liquidity cycles. This, in his view, is why stocks can rise even in the face of slow growth. The key is the Fed's ability to ease financial conditions and keep liquidity flowing.
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