Inflation is setting up for some good comps, says Fundstrat's Tom Lee

better than expected December CPI print my next guest says this morning's report could be a good sign for the months to come joining me now with his Market Outlook and his best stock ideas for this month is fun Strat Global advisor Tom Lee a CNBC contributor welcome back great to see you Scott all right first your view right now on this Market is what I think that markets are showing some relief that CPI was doish and actually I think some of the inflation prints the last two days have been doish including PPI so it's setting

the stage for yields to which kind of were close to touching 5% to kind of cool and at a time when sentiment been negative I think we should be rallying is a Fed back in the game which means this report was good enough these two reports really um as some are saying that okay you're not going to get a cut in January but you could get one in March and some people had written cuts off for many many months yes uh into this CPI print the whisper number for core CPI was over3 so the market

was bracing for a really hot number and you could see it in the FED fund Futures where as of yesterday there was a 30% plus chance of a Fed hike um I think those sort of extreme views have been quelled uh and I just think generally without counting for the fact that the California fires could mess with inflation the inflation print over the next 3 months is going to be a lot lower than what we saw November and October and remember January to March of last year it was Clos close to4 so I think inflation

is setting up for some good comps okay how optimistic are you for the type of return we could do this year after back-to-back you know 20 20 plus% gains for the S&P we've gotten some good harbingers so far cuz the first 5 days of this year the S&P is positive so I'd say there's an 80% chance of something over double digits for the year and what's going to matter to a lot of people is how we do for the month of January but as of January 15th we're up 7% so those are good harbingers for

the year can we have a good year If the Fed doesn't cut until later in the year and bond yields remain elevated for a while uh if if bond yields get stuck here it is a a TR it's a real a severe tightening of financial conditions and I think it's going to hit housing and we've already seeing it now so I think it is important for yields to move directionally lower that's a long way of saying stocks will not be good if bond yields stay where they are now yes it's it's going to test the

Market's resolve I don't think it kills equities but it's hard for someone to be pounding the table if they think yields are going to be stuck at close to 5% for the next six months wow so if yields let's just say they stay near where they are now you wouldn't be as optimistic as you as you are I think it's going to raise concerns there's a policy error from the FED um that either Financial conditions are too tight or the Bears will argue the FED made a mistake cutting too aggressively last year is just the

base case I mean you you have what is arguably a more inflationary environment because of some of the policies that are being talked about by a new Administration sure they may stimulate more economic growth but with that potentially comes more sticky inflation too well um there isn't a there isn't necessarily connection between growing fast and more inflation there is some inflation that can be generated by tariffs and that's the uncertainty but that's what I mean also it's like tariffs it's inflating the deficit it's just reinflation it's the reinflation trade based on some of the expected

policies that may cause that true but to keep in mind last year's inflation first of all a lot of last year's inflation was what they call imputed because it was just statistically catching up to the price changes of the years before but it's housing and auto insurance were 80 % of the inflation over the last four years and the third is labor markets which we know aren't in in inflationary position so in order for new policies to generate inflation they have to they have to be powerful forces that fiscal spending hasn't generated the last three

years so I I'd say that it's difficult for me to make the case inflation's getting strong okay