Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Investors Putting Some Chips on INTC?

We've had some recent strength in the semiconductor stocks. Intel (INTC) has been on my radar for the last few days due to a breakout in relative dollar volume flows. Not only are we seeing more investor dollars being put to work in INTC; these inflows are occurring with consistency. Indeed, we've now had 13 consecutive sessions in which dollar flows were above average (i.e., above the 200 day average; horizontal red line on chart) for INTC.

Recall that dollar volume flow looks at whether transactions occurred on upticks or downticks and weight those transactions by their dollar volume. As a result, it's an excellent indicator of institutional interest in companies and sectors. I will be continuing to watch INTC and the semis to see if large traders and investors continue to put their chips to work in the sector.