Isn't the point about interest rates that if they go up, the 'money' will switch out of stocks into interest bearing deposits, thus lowering the price of stocks. Also, of course, the purpose behind increasing interest rates is to slow the economy and therefore slower growth in any given company; reducing the acceptable P/E of stocks. It has nothing (well, unless a company is VERY indebted) to do with the debt ratio of a given company.
Of course, that argument hardly makes sense when applied to Intel but the Street is hardly rational. If interest rates go up, Intel will probably go down because the 'money' moves out, but that gives us all a time to buy.
As for flat quarterly earnings, I think not. Pent Pro is (I think) doing better than even Intel hoped, and the low margin motherboard business is dying (although the Pent Pro motherboards might be picking up -- anyone care to comment?) I don't know if christmas machines are stocked this quarter, but NT 4.0 has to be driving some demand this Q. All in all, I think Intel will beat analysts expectations by a few cents.
Of course, profit warnings from cyrix, amd, mu etc might well send the lemmings into a semi selling panic, giving us more cheap INTC to buy...
Richard |
