Alright bonobos, I put all my creativity into making a title that spells AUTISM so I hope that will be enough to make you at least skip all this text and read the TL;DR of this post. While I start this of in WSB style the content is supposed to be serious. I'm writing this post in tribute to Nana and hope her regarded grandson is still holding. 🙏
I will cover:
* Product Status
* CEO Status
* Geopolitical Developments
* Notable 13F Filings
* Sentiment
* My Position
**Product Status**
So the main take I see on X and Reddit is that Intel's products suck and their financials are even worse. Well guess what, that take is still valid today. And what's worse about this situation? TSMC is the one producing these products.
So, that part is the reason why Intel's market cap is now only 37% of Palantir's but that might also be the worst possible comparison I can make at this point.
Now onto the positives. Intel recently released consumer GPUs which are called Battlemage. These are already highly praised in subreddits about pc building and seen from the posts are also often out of stock and even scalped like it's 2021 again. They are also releasing new CPUs with naming schemes that are harder than they were but here too the first benchmarks are looking very good (like the Ultra 9 275HX).
These new designs in combination with switfly improving drivers are not the big revenue drivers but it is a clear hint to what they're capable of.
The most important thing about product is that they claim to be on schedule to start 18A high volume manufacturing (HVM) in H2 2025. 18A is a new node technique that is capable of laserbeaming transistors closer together than anyone else including TSMC, meaning chips with higher transistor density. They are also planning on allowing others (like Microsoft) to fabricate their own design chips on this node.
**CEO Status**
Keeping this one short, it will be former GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield but this news just still has to officially drop sometime soon. (Ok... I'm not 100% sure about this but currently this is the most likely scenario and sentiment about him on socials appears to be very good).
**Geopolitical Developments**
Do I really have to explain this?! If Intel pulls of 18A HVM, they are the only (American) company producing these high tech chips. We know Trumps administration gets hard from hearing the words domestic production and I bet they prefer Intel over TSMCs fabs because well... even with fabs in America it still has Taiwan in its name.
Then early this week we also had this quote from JD Vance on CNN:
*Vance also mentioned other touchstones of Trump’s administration, saying that, “to safeguard America’s advantage,” it will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American-designed and manufactured chips.*
At the same time Intel VP:
*Intel vice president just said in the AI SUMMIT that chips used for AI will be designed and ‘produced’ in the US.*
So after these developments and knowing 18A HVM is coming soon. What I think is most interesting here (hopefully not going fully conspiracy theorist): Why is the Trump administration delaying tariffs on chips specifically? Are they.... are they waiting for... they're not waiting for... right?!?! **Imagine...**
**Notable 13F Filings:**
Alright so, companies with >100M USD are required by the SEC to disclose their trades through a form called 13F which most of you will likely know. The rules for 13F are that they have to file within 45 days after quarter end. Q4 2024 = December 31st. Add 45 days and you get February 14th, add some SEC processing time and the peak of new filings usually hits 15-17th of February meaning for now I have to use the info from Q3.
Overall 13F shows that in Q3 institutions total holdings decreased which, given purely the financials, makes sense (algo say money bad = sell), but that's how your boomer pension funds work. We can also look at the people who will try to fuck us over (and make money) like... Citadel. Even Citadel is boring compared to the next one but Citadel is LOADING up on shares and calls.
Most interesting? Jane Street. These guys are the super nerds that predict the market and are also market ~~manipulators~~ makers. They sold, but that's not the full story. While they have/had a lot of puts which they increased by 18% in Q3, they also increased their calls by 450%. Their new filing for Q4 will likely show another hard trend in this direction.
**Sentiment**
So as we've already seen this week, sentiment is changing in Intel's favor. People are cautiously regaining confidence in their products and that combined with a very favorable administration and a new node could make this one of the most interesting plays one can do in 2025.
**My position**
I got burned around Nana time (believe that was Q2 ER last year) and lost about 10k USD. Got back in over the past few weeks with a 20$ avg. for 3000 shares.
**TLDR**
Screw that this post took too long and we have a TLDR bot these says so read the bots comment. I will add WSB emoji tax after posting so I can do it on my phone.
EDIT: Phone tax: “🙌💎🦅pleas fly again 🦅💎🙌”. REPOSTED because mods deleted it since it had no screenshot of position...
Position (65k EUR):
https://preview.redd.it/h5ablj19nwie1.png?width=945&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7e077fc7e237ff265f105a84f52c7ce6073044e