Thomas Lee has been dismissed and derided for being a permabull. The Wall Street analyst has also been right.
On the morning of March 24, Mr. Lee, co-founder of research firm Fundstrat Global Advisors, told more than 1,000 clients on his firm’s conference call that the market would hit new highs by the end of the summer.
Mr. Lee’s prediction was improbable. At that exact moment, the Covid-19 pandemic had brought New York to a standstill and several markets were breaking down. But by August, the market had returned to new highs.
“We saved a lot of folks from disaster,” said Mr. Lee, who provides stock research and market forecasts with his 17-person team. “Sometimes you have to put your hat on the ground and say: ‘This is the bottom.’”
Over the last 30 years, the Michigan-raised Mr. Lee has garnered a reputation as one of Wall Street’s most aggressive market optimists, working at Kidder, Peabody & Co., Salomon Smith Barney, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and now his own research firm.
