Last night after the close, INTC reported 3Q16 earnings results.

The number were good.  INTC’s growth businesses grew; its legacy arms showed unusual pep.  The latter development had been flagged by INTC during the quarter when the company announced wholesale customers were increasing their chip inventories. Nevertheless, earnings per share of $.80 exceeded the average of 29 Wall Street analysts by $.07–and surpassed even the highest street estimate by a penny.

Despite this, the stock fell by about 3% as soon as the earnings release was made public.  Traders clipped another 2% off the share price on the earnings conference call.  During trading today, the stock initially fell almost another 2%, before rallying a bit to close just below its worst aftermarket level.

There was some bad news in the report.  It will cost INTC more than anticipated to rid itself of McAfee.  It also looks like chip customers are no longer so eager to build inventory.  Instead, thus far in the fourth quarter they seem to be subtracting some of the extra they added during 3Q.   The result of this is that INTC thinks 4Q–usually the strongest period of the year seasonally–will only be flat with the robust performance of 3Q16.

I find the selling to be unusually harsh (be aware:  I own INTC shares).  After all, if INTC had earned the $.73/share the market had expected, a forecast of $.76 wouldn’t look all that bad.  That outcome, which appears to be the company’s current guidance, would also be better than the analyst consensus had been predicting for 4Q last week.

I’m not trying to argue that the stock should have gone up on this report.  I just don’t see enough bad–or, better said, enough unforeseeably bad–news to warrant a selloff of this magnitude in a gently rising market.

I attribute the aftermarket selloff to some combination of computer trading and thin volumes.  What surprises me is that there were no significant buyers once regular trading–overseen, presumably, by senior human investors–began.

Because of this, I think that trading in INTC over the next days is well worth watching to see if/when buyers reenter the market.  We may be able to draw conclusions that reach wider than INTC itself.