Pat "The Kid" Gunslinger Shoots Down The Nasdaq
Dive For Cover!!
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MARKETS IN TURMOIL. Maybe.
by Alex King.
Intel is on a mighty tear these days, delivering 100% gains from the February 2023 lows to the January 2024 highs. Not too shabby for one of Silicon Valley's old folks. This success is down to four factors. One, the need for the US to re-shore advanced semiconductor manufacturing as a pre-emptive hedge against any annexation of Taiwan (where TSMC lives) by China. Two, the absence of any viable candidate save for Intel to be able to do that at scale. Three, the shovelfulls of money tossed Intel's way courtesy of the CHIPS Act (see One and Two for its logic). And four, the new-ish CEO at Intel, Pat Gunslinger. Gelsinger. Sorry.
Intel printed a solid quarter yesterday; the stock dumped - it's down 12%-ish in pre-market trading at the time of writing. Talking heads will tell you that's because of something called guidance. You know, because you read our stuff and you are too smart to fall for talking heads narratives, that is just ex post facto rationalization. Because you know the real reason it dumped is that it had already run up a lot. Time for bigs to cash some gains, to scare any civilians who piled in late, and generally to shake down smalls for some free money before going again.
Intel Since The Financial Crisis Depths
You can click here for a full page version of this chart.
Anyway, INTC properly scared the horses. SOXX freaked out first (in staff personal accounts we used this to scoop some free-money gains in SOXS, real-time alerted ahead of time for our paying members over at Inner Circle as always). Then Nasdaq got wind of the trouble in the fields and got skittish, coming so soon after the fright from Tesla earnings the day before. The Nasdaq-100 is down about 1% at the present time, as you will see from the QQQ, NQ and TQQQ charts below. And the slower-twitch S&P is wondering about whether to dump. Now down around 0.4%.
Whether this all gathers momentum and sees a material correction to the incredible bull run since October 2023, no clue. We'll watch it in real time as always, and react to what is actually happening to price, rather than what our pathetically jumpy limbic brains tell us might happen to price.
OK. Now onto our usual charts. Paying members of this Market Insight Substack, scroll down for our take on the S&P500, the Nasdaq-100, the Dow Jones 30 and the Russell 2000.