Called $NVDA bullish on Oct 27, 2023: $NVDA rose 133% in 5 months.
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Founder of Niles Investment Management, Tech Nerd, Bad Tennis Player, Proud Dad. Posts are for information purposes only & never investment advice.
accuracy score 52.0 on INTC over 29 INTC calls · 480 days of data · rank 13 of 14 INTC analysts (top 92.9%) · v20r-multi-sparsepen-strong-ss12m-20261012, computed Nov 11, 2026 · Methodology →
Cite asCryptoQuant has tracked 29 directional calls on INTC by @DanielTNiles on X since Jan 2018: ranked #13 of 14 analysts scored on INTC by accuracy (as of Nov 11, 2026).
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Relative view by default: fewer than 30 INTC calls or days on record.
Sentiment timeline shows relative sentiment within this analyst's history. A perma-bull showing 8 bullish : 2 bearish in a bear market sets that as their baseline. If you notice any errors, claim @DanielTNiles to submit corrections.
Called $NVDA bullish on Oct 27, 2023: $NVDA rose 133% in 5 months.
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Last wk, earnings had elements of all the AI issues I feared in my preview. $GOOGL – AI disintermediation fear for search and big FCF miss. $MSFT – neocloud partner pushing out capacity and 1st new fundraising bonds since 2017. $AMZN – AI growth miss in AWS and FCF miss. Tech took a beating last week with Nasdaq -2.0% and Mag7 -2.4% but with S&P down only 0.6%. However, the nine non-tech related sub sectors (out of the eleven total) were strong and up 1.0-3.1%. As a result, the equal weighted S&P was up 0.8%. The above three names all declined last week with Google down 12.6%, Amazon -3.1% and Microsoft -0.5%. The historic 28.6% stock decline by $INTC on Friday (-24.4% for the week) did not help. This helped drive the SOX Index down 7.2% on Friday though the weekly decline was only 0.8%. With all the hyperscalers now having reported, here are my current thoughts: 1) Microsoft has committed to staying FCF positive (with $18.6B in FCF in CQ3) and is the only name in this list that has committed to do so. M365 is likely to become the default option for enterprises that want AI in a safe environment through use of Co-Pilot. 2) Meta is using AI to improve the efficiency of their business as seen in their ad revenues compared to Google. Also Muse has been a hit with consumers for Agentic AI while they are appealing to enterprises with their strong open-weight models. An 18x CY27 PE for 28% revenue growth is appealing. Their major blemish is the future negative FCF expected with a $2.1B burn in Q3 driving them to raise ~$95B in equity financing following earnings results. S&P Global Ratings on cash flow concerns and AI spending revised their credit rating today from AA- stable to AA- negative. 3) Amazon despite missing buyside AWS expectations of ~42% y/y growth with 39% reported (official sellside consensus of 38%) expects 40% revenue growth for AWS in CY27 and CY28 despite being the largest public cloud vendor. Also their LTM FCF burn of $42.4B in Q3 vs $7.6B in June helped lead to a $80B supplier financing arrangement facility post-earnings. Also physical AI should benefit their e-commerce business. Both e-commerce and AWS were guided to be $1 trillion revenue businesses within the next 5-10 years. 4) Google’s new LLM model is back at the frontier with a low cost per token. However this miss in search revenues for the 2nd quarter in a row and first miss in both total revenues and EPS for the first time since late 2022 raises AI disintermediation fears. FCF burn of $9.1B was also more than expectations. But total search queries are at the highest levels in five years. As a result, as ad coverage and loads increase on their AI queries, these fears should pass much like in late 2025. Ultimately, I believe Google will be a winner in consumer AI through their distribution through Android phones. As for Intel, I did not see this coming. On October 20th, $SMCI (purely enterprise related revenues) pre-announced 27% revenue upside along with a raise to gross margins guidance to 12-12.5% from 10.4%-10.8% for their CQ3. I am not a fan of SuperMicro to be clear. For the processor vendors, I thought upside in server revenues due to Agentic AI would offset the downside in their PC business due to memory related price increases lowering demand. $AMD, which is gaining share, reports earnings on Tuesday. This will help investors understand whether this is an Intel specific issue or industry issue. I would note that Microsoft’s guidance for their Windows OEM & Devices business was down ~35% y/y for December vs -22% in September and -7% in June. Longer-term, I believe Intel will become a force in the foundry industry but in the near-term it may take some time for the valuation to reset lower due to their current microprocessor business. Looking forward, $AAPL reports on Monday after the close. The stock has been a beneficiary of investors looking to avoid AI companies with huge FCF burns. However, I would be wary into earnings that are likely to provide lower than expected guidance for the December quarter from a combination of higher currency impact, margin compression from semiconductor price increases, iPhone unit pressure from higher ASPs, a slowdown in services revenues and less than expected high margin TAC revenue from Google. Ultimately, I believe Apple will be a winner in consumer AI through their distribution through iPhones. I also believe their new foldable phone will drive a large upgrade cycle in 2027. But in the near-term I believe it is prudent to remove Apple (up 27% ytd) from my Top5 Picks that I put out when 2026 started. As a reminder this is meant to be a buy and hold list for the entire year for those that do not have time to be managing things daily which is what I do. I believe Apple is likely to be a Top 5 Pick at the start of 2027. We are now entering the seasonally strongest month of the year. Since 1957, which is the inception of the modern day S&P500, November is up +1.8% and tied for the best hit rate with April & December at up 71% of the time. This compares to an average return of 0.7% and hit rate of 61% for all months. Surprisingly, the returns for November in mid-term election years is even better with an average of 2.6% and hit rate of 82%. This might have to do with the ytd annual return being lower going into the elections at -1.8% through October with a hit rate of 53% so there is a relief rally on the other side. In summary, this earnings season has been more trick than treat for technology investors. Being more discerning and trading around positions has been the correct tactic. I think will continue to be the case. Let us hope November gives us something to be thankful for. All the best in the week ahead.
View original →Last wk, Muse from $Meta (+12.9%) & co-Pilot overhaul by $MSFT (+4.5%) drove AI infrastructure strength (SOX Index +6.3%) led by processor vendors, $INTC/$AMD/$ARM all +13%. Agentic AI flips GPU:CPU ratio from ~8:1 to ~1:4. SOX+Meta+Microsoft was all the S&P gain. WTI dropped 7.9% last wk while Brent was +0.4% but bond yields surged 10-17 bps across the 3m/30yr curve hitting levels not seen since July-2007 for the 10 year and June-2004 for the 30 year. Yield drivers included: 1) multiple Fed governors messaging higher-for-longer, 2) strong economic data like PMI & capital goods, 3) AI financing concerns following $ORCL (-7% last week) invoking force majeure for their New Mexico datacenter for OpenAI, and 5) weak treasury auction. One of the big use cases for Muse seems to be in cutting monthly bills. This renewed disruption fear for businesses with friction or inertia including telecom $VZ ( -2% last week), insurance $KIE -4%, banking $KBWB -2%, wealth management $SCHW -6%, shopping comparison platforms $AMZN -2% and banned Muse, travel $BKNG -2%, ride-share $UBER -1%, fitness memberships $PLNT -14%, ticket resale $STUB -8% and digital advertising- $GOOGL -2%. These names above have a median return of -1% year-to-date with half of them down ytd. In the disruption fears category above, Google is the one that I am most bullish on. I believe they are very close to launching a new model that will challenge the frontier leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI. In addition I believe all LLM companies will launch their own competitor to Meta Muse including Google. OpenAI DevDay 2026, is taking place on Tuesday. I ultimately believe that consumers will use an AI agent sitting on their smartphone from $AAPL or the Android ecosystem from Google while enterprises will default to the "safety" of co-Pilot on M365 from Microsoft. I believe the AI agent will pick the underlying LLM most suited for the task and commoditize that layer with the value accruing to the infrastructure layer. On a fundamental basis, CQ3 earnings appear solid, especially for AI infrastructure companies. Implied S&P revenue/EPS for Q3 remains strong at 14%/35% y/y with the Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast at 5%. The question will be how companies react to widely expected beat and raise quarters. Q2 results were not taken well with the Nasdaq -3% and Semi Index -21% during the month of July. The stock reaction to widely expected strong quarterly results/guidance from $MU on Wednesday should give us some clues. From a bigger picture standpoint, the R2K, which is the most sensitive to rates, was down 0.8% last week. While I am impressed by the S&P, the gains were narrow and powered by the AI infrastructure names I am particularly bullish on: microprocessors within semiconductors on the advent of Agentic AI (see initial post on 3/31) and Meta (see initial post on 9/7.) Microsoft which I posted about last Sunday is also a favored name as a “safe” way for corporations to access AI though their 27% OpenAI ownership concerns me. Looking back at history, 20% or greater drawdowns in the S&P have been preceded by or accompanied by the combination of 1) surging bond yields, 2) surging oil prices and 3) Fed tightening cycle. This includes: 1) 1973–1974 OPEC Oil Embargo and Stagflation, 2) 1980–1982 Volcker Rate Shock, 3) 1990 Gulf War, 4) 2007–2009 Global Financial Crisis, and 5) 2022 Post-Pandemic Inflation Crisis. It is possible that the massive AI infrastructure spend & resultant S&P EPS growth of 35% y/y can offset this. It certainly has so far. However, the three middle episodes above had the following positive technological developments as well: 1) the PC revolution started in the late 1970s, 2) the Internet in the mid-1990s and 3) smartphones in the late 2000s. As a result, until bond yields stop their surge, I am remaining very selective on the individual names & sectors I favor. I am therefore watching closely the datacenter pushouts, the developments in Iran and the impact on oil prices. All the best in the week ahead.
View original →Is $INTC about to be “super successful?” When they were asked on their July 23rd earnings call about the need to raise capital, which they are doing this morning with their $15B common stock offering, this is how the CFO answered: “we feel like we're in a really good place from a balance sheet perspective. We have over $30 billion of cash. We have a $10 billion revolver. So, we've got $40 billion of liquidity… Obviously, the fact that revenue and profitability and EBITDA are all expanding helps a lot in terms of the cash flow that throws off to the business. And additionally, we have… roughly, call it $10 billion of what it's called non-core assets that can still be monetized on the balance sheet… And we have seen, by the way, our customers willing to invest with us. And we've had pre-pays from customers… that has enabled us to unlock capacity that's helped us. That said, if we're super successful, which we're driving to, we may need to tap the capital markets to drive…some more investment.” My belief of what “super-successful” means is they are close to signing up one or more major foundry customers, which is very capital intensive, and they need a lot more capacity to ramp it. I expect more details from industry sources to come out over time given a press release is unlikely given the secrecy demanded by most customers. I believe with Intel, there are multiple ways to win: 1) higher ratio of CPUs to GPUs in Agentic, 2) advanced packaging and 3) US national champion in foundry. This offering today increases my conviction they are on the path to being “super successful.”
View original →July 29 marked a bottom after forced liquidations, including Situational Awareness's full equity sale; SOX +9.2% last week and momentum index +14% in 7 days confirm a strong AI-led rally
Last wk, the AI surge post Situational Awareness resolution continued. S&P/NAS/SOX was +3.6%/+5.2%/+9.2%. WTI -8% with 10Y bond ylds -9bps helped. I wrote on 7/29, “we could have seen at least a short-term bottom today with a strong rally ahead of us in the sectors most caught in the latest speedbump.” I thought forced liquidations of both retail accounts and hedge funds were creating a bottom. The next day, Situational Awareness had a forced sale of all its public equity positions. The Morgan Stanely Momentum Index is now up a whopping 14% in just 7 trading days from July 29th following the 38% drawdown from June 22nd to July 29th. The more concentrated TMT Index is up 25% from 7/29 following the 54% decline from 6/22-7/29. The S&P/Nasdaq/SOX (Semiconductor Index) is up 6.0%/9.2%/18.3% since 7/29. To end the week, the less than expected jobs report on Friday encouraged equity and bond markets that had been worrying about rate hikes. I still believe hikes are less likely than current fears given Kevin Warsh was appointed as Fed Chairman for his belief in AI being deflationary. The CPI report on Wednesday will be important for this thesis. It was encouraging to see the semiconductor sector rally 9.2% last week despite the acid test of lackluster results from $AMD and the memory names which have been the tip of the spear in the semiconductor trade. $AMD had both revs and EPS edge up low single digits for Q3 but this was disappointing compared to $INTC EPS going up ~40% for Q3. AMD’s stock was up 2% for the entire week despite declining 7% in reaction to results the next day. $SNDK was flat for the entire week despite declining 7% the next day in reaction to guiding CQ3 revenues 2% below consensus. $WDC was down 20% last week after guiding EPS just 4% above consensus for CQ3 which was disappointing relative to $STX results where CQ3 moved up 25%. In the near-term, I continue not to be a fan of the memory sector relative to other AI infrastructure names given I remain concerned about US companies like $AAPL getting approval to use Chinese memory & recent moves by $NVDA to lessen memory requirements. Nvidia is evaluating shipping the Rubin Ultra with as little as 192 GB of HBM vs the original roadmap of 1 Terabyte. But this would be good for Nvidia that reports earnings later this month given they could ship a lot more GPUs for a given amount of memory. Also Elon Musk stated last week, "Going forward, we have decided to build exclusively on Nvidia, because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture.” This is a powerful statement given the many companies trying to push the benefits of their ASIC accelerators. Nvidia is also a value and growth play at the same time with just a 25x CY26 PE for over 80% revenue growth. Revenue growth for Nvidia has also accelerated for every quarter from July 2025 at 56% y/y to expectations of 96% for July of 2026. In support of this growth, the six big hyperscalers saw capex growth accelerate from 84% y/y in the March quarter to 92% in the June qtr with forecasts of nearly 100% growth in the September quarter. Each quarter of 2026 is showing higher y/y capex growth than at any time during this AI buildout. In summary, I believe the near-term pain trade is higher in equity markets. For those funds that got punished in July and were forced to de-gross near the bottom, FOMO and performance chasing is now kicking in. None of my technical indicators are flashing overbought yet given the severe drawdowns prior to the current rally. The evolving situation in Iran is obviously the wildcard. Best of luck in the week ahead.
View original →@Sesamstraat2 This note was already long so I removed the part talking about $INTC being my favorite semiconductor stock benefitting from Agentic AI. The recent sell-off despite terrific results and guidance (~40% above EPS consensus for Q3) makes it even more attractive.
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