Photo: BoliviaInteligente / unsplash
America's broad index of stocks S&P 500 and technology Nasdaq Composite opened April 24 in positive territory on the back of Intel securities soaring to an all-time high, CNBC notes.
Details
The day before, after the close of trading, Intel reported a 22% increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2026 in the data center segment - the company has finally started to get a return on AI amid a sharp increase in demand for central processing units (CPUs). Against this backdrop, the chipmaker's shares soared 20% on the postmarket on April 23, and after the opening of trading on April 24 - added 28% at once, jumping to $85.22 per piece. This is an absolute maximum for Intel securities - even higher than the peak at which they were traded during the dot-com era, Bloomberg notes.
"All the [major tech companies] are starting to place orders [for chips] with Intel, and I think this is just the beginning of a trend," Thomas Hayes, an investor in the chipmaker and chairman of investment firm Great Hill Capital, remarked on Bloomberg Television. "The situation [regarding Intel securities] has gone from despondency to euphoria in a very short period of time," he added. Since the beginning of the year, Intel shares are up more than 120%, with more than 86% added in the last month alone.
Against the background of Intel's results on April 24, the broad index of American stocks S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are growing - in the first minutes of the session they added 0.4% and 0.6% respectively, but then - following the Intel securities a little slowed down. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones blue-chip index is in the red zone, losing 0.34%. The Russell 2000 index of small and medium capitalization companies is falling by 0.23%.
Brent crude oil prices are fluctuating around $105 - about the same level they closed at the day before. North American WTI is at $94.89 - about 1% cheaper than at the close of trading on Thursday.
What the market is saying
"There's a difference between beating earnings expectations and smashing them," remarked AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould. "It's no exaggeration to say that Intel delivered the latter result in its latest quarterly report," she added (quoted by Bloomberg).
"The correction in [U.S.] large technology stocks that began before the war with Iran is almost over, and valuations have returned to overvalued levels," Kerux Financial Chief Investment Officer David Lauth pointed out. - The outlook for big tech stocks [now] depends solely on [their] earnings," he emphasized. Fundamentals have "rebounded" since the start of the US reporting season, Lauth said: "And that's a positive for stocks, which have been tied to the price of oil for most of the last two months.
However, in addition to euphoria in the technology sector, traders are also watching the news from the Middle East region, Bloomberg notes. On April 24, Reuters, citing an unnamed official, reported that Iran's foreign minister is set to arrive in Islamabad on the evening of April 24. Thus, the second round of talks between Washington and Tehran may continue, the agency's interlocutor pointed out.
"These may not be peace talks - we need confirmation from the White House before we can say exactly what these talks are designed to accomplish," commented Kathleen Brooks of XTB.
In Washington the data on the resumption of the negotiation process has not yet commented.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
