As for earnings reports, Intel was ok, but the guide was light. The Wintel paradigm has a moment of truth forthcoming. We will see if its obsolete or if it manages to maintain relevance with their Ultrabook program. I have seen a lot of cool hardware using Wintel in the Ultrabook department and with the Windows 8 upgrade no one really knows how much of PC sloppiness is macro, postponement for new OS, or permanent cannibalization…. I can say that if its more the first 2, Wintel is a screaming buy here with huge upside. I am long intel.
Regarding sloppy business, IBM posted a stinker. I don’t get the “perma-love” it gets from the sell side and talking heads. According to a great trader, “you buy tech for growth” and IBM keeps posting negative revenue growth and it doesn’t pay much of a dividend. So no growth and no income. Yet, it mesmerizes the street. Consider me a skeptic at current valuations. At 10-12x’s earnings, I am in.
I heard lots of different talking heads blast the bulls for their negativity, as if we have missed this huge move. Let me see the S&P 500 first hit 1423 in July of 1999 and we hit that a couple of days ago. As to 2012, the value line arithmetic hit 3023 on February 8th and 2 days ago. The average stock has been laboring much more than the large cap, high yielders this year. For that index, the bull market has been consolidating since February, as its still below the September peak. If your equal weighted portfolio is like this index, its been churning for much of the year after the big run up from last November thru this February.
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