It’s Boxing Day in the UK, so no trading, not that that market has much contemporary relevance. Other smaller markets are getting ready to shut down at mid-week for a long New Year’s break. And the power players on Wall Street have long since closed their books for 2023, as well. 

Nevertheless, I find this ostensibly sleepy period one of the most entertaining weeks of the year. Volumes tend to be low, so even small trades tend to move markets by a relatively large amount. Then there’s the issue of the motivation behind anyone eager/desperate enough to be trading now.

One stock that is catching my eye is INTC, a stock who’s recent claim to fame is that’s gone 0 for the 21st century so far. It has yet to revisit the highs of the Y2K internet craze, while a name like MSFT is 8x that level (despite having been saddled with Steve Ballmer for all those years) and AAPL is 200x+. 

The company’s story, as I understand it, is that it has been the king of the microprocessor market from forever. Yes, its chips have been large, by today’s standards and run very hot, so they’re not the best for cellphones. Still, until perhaps ten years ago, the company led the world in process technology, so its chips’ greater speed offset the clunky.

Then engineers at TSMC, the world’s premiere foundry (meaning it manufactures chips that others design), caught up with–and then surpassed–INTC in small size/high speed. So users like GOOG, AAPL or MSFT could create bespoke chips that are just as fast as INTC’s, yet run cooler and take up less space. To me, INTC has seemed like a textbook case of company aging: the original innovators retire; bureaucrats replace them, focusing on cost-cutting instead of innovation; and the company becomes a shell of its former self. 

Recently, though, not only has INTC shifted gears to become a foundry itself, but the stock has visibly perked up–and INTC has begun to suggest that it has pulled even in process technology with TSMC for the first time in years. It will be interesting to see how the stock trades during the current quiet week.