Fundstrat Global Advisors managing partner Tom Lee predicts that the S&P 500 will rise further next year. He told “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday that his target for the index going into 2024 is 4,750, or nearly 9 percent up from Wednesday’s close. Lee said he thought comments from this week’s Fed meeting gave the “green light” for further gains in stocks. “Our view is you want to take risks this year,” he added. “The reason we want you to take the risk is we do think we’re largely past the worst of this tightening cycle and we think inflationary pressures are easing rapidly.” That would set the stage for earnings outperformance, he said . “Whenever you’re at an inflection point in earnings, that’s actually when you want to be a long-term cyclical industry and basically a risk-on industry,” Lee said. Lee said sticky inflation and unemployment data led to a “hawkish pause” at the Fed, but forward-looking data pointed to further declines in inflation. “I think one of the subtle things that happened is that the Fed didn’t even mention the stock market once, and was even disturbed by the fact that the S&P was up 15% year-to-date,” he said, adding that Powell “became super hawkish” in the last year. At the Fed meeting in November, when he was asked about the rally at the time. “Over the next two sessions, the market was down 5 percent,” he said of the November period. “So I actually don’t think the Fed cares about the stock market here. I think that’s why … it’s the green light for the stock market to continue going up.” In a separate note on June 14, Lee said he would “Buy the Dip on a Hawkish Pause” and “Buy a 5% Stock Pullback”. “The latest Bank of America fund manager survey shows that fund managers are significantly underweight equities. Here’s why we’re ‘buying the dip’ in the coming months,” he wrote. Lee said he is currently overweight technology, energy and industrials. In his report, he mentioned some stocks that he thinks are attractive. His information technology choices include Microsoft and Nvidia. He also picked ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum for energy, and American Express and Fiserv for finance. Are higher interest rates bad for Nvidia and Apple? Higher interest rates are generally considered bad for fast-growing tech companies, but Lee said Apple and chipmaker Nvidia are “very strong” positioned. “The real story of these companies is really about their market position and dominance,” he said. “There really isn’t another Apple or another Nvidia as long as they’re at the core of what’s going on … Whether it’s AI or you know, consumers, I don’t know if you want to say that the rate hikes will kill the their stories.”