Tom Lee Says AI Stocks Have Bottomed, and Crypto's Calm Is His Proof

Fundstrat's Tom Lee isn't blinking. The chief strategist told CNBC's Squawk Box on Nov. 2 that the brutal selloff in AI stocks has finally hit a technical floor. The market for AI, he said, is still tight.

The damage has been lopsided. Microchip makers and computing-infrastructure firms shed a cumulative 17% across October, according to Fundstrat's read of market data. The S&P 500 barely flinched over the same stretch, slipping less than 1%. Lee's take: that gap reflects supply constraints, not inventory saturation. Bottlenecks in advanced manufacturing and regulatory debates are slowing execution, he argues, but they don't signal a structural top.

Intel makes the case. The chipmaker's data center and AI division pulled in $7.3 billion last quarter, up 78% year over year. Investors still bolted — shares cratered nearly 30% in a single session after Intel's overall revenue guidance landed at $15 billion to $16 billion, with a midpoint below what Wall Street wanted.

Lee's second pillar is crypto, which he treats as an early gauge of global risk appetite. Over the past week the ecosystem absorbed a security incident on Binance preliminarily valued at $6.3 billion. Bitcoin's response: a modest 4% pullback that left it hovering near $76,400 — no sustained panic selling.

The institutional crowd stayed wary. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs logged $643.2 million in net daily outflows after the incident. Bitcoin still climbed back above $78,000 during Monday's session, the same day the affected platform froze $3 billion in assets tied to the breach.

Politics get a vote too. Lee points to the U.S. midterm elections, noting equities have historically liked divided government because it lowers the odds of abrupt tax or regulatory overhauls. The thesis gets its real test in mid-November, when quarterly earnings land and the week's digital-asset ETF flow figures close out.