Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[bobs10]

Polarization, or how I learned to love my bipolar analyst.

Things are really getting ancy. It's been quite a while since I saw a stock with such differing views. Since April 19th there have been 3 upgrades followed by 3 downgrades followed by 2 upgrades and an initial buy, this according to Yahoo. Currently there are 4 strong buys, 7 buys, 12 holds, 4 sells and 3 strong sells. Talk about a confused bunch of analysts. On top of this as of 8/8/04 there were about 65M shares shorted and volume has been going balistic.

Not too surprising to most of us who have been following AMD, but clearly Wall Street is having a hard time adjusting to the fact that things aren't what they used to be.

Apparently INTC has finally gone a mistake too far. Further it looks like Hector has been listening to Jerry and is getting ready to go for INTC's jugular. Still, I find it hard to believe that INTC could fall so far and as fast as to let AMD have 50% of the market in a couple of years. Further, doing so without DELL signing on in a big way would seem impossible, but who knows?

Speaking of DELL, we've been seeing an almost constant stream of articles from the pres of DELL saying nice things about AMD. Hard to imagine why he would be doing so without some sort of agreement already worked out. After all no one says good things about their enemies unless the enemy is about to become a friend. Maybe all this posturing is an attempt at keeping customers that have threatened to bolt because they can't get their Opterons from Dell?

Right now things seem so confused that the only thing I would bet on is lots of volatility. AMD may have a beta of 4 by the time this is finally decided. For those nimble enough there should be some good eats out there.