$INTC Just Eclipsed Its Dot-Com Peak — And the YouTube Finance World Can't Stop Talking About It
From Intel's jaw-dropping earnings to Apple's leadership shake-up and a Fed Chair drama that won't quit — here's what finance YouTube actually agreed on this week
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INTC INTEL CORP | buy | $82.73 | — | — | — |
| AAPL Apple Inc. | hold | $270.94 | — | — | — |
| AMD ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES INC | buy | $348.90 | — | — | — |
| QCOM QUALCOMM INC/DE | buy | $149.90 | — | — | — |
| CHTR CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC. /MO/ | sell | $180.51 | — | — | — |
| NVDA NVIDIA CORP | buy | $208.10 | — | — | — |
| EQT EQT Corp | buy | $59.24 | — | — | — |
| LLY ELI LILLY & Co | hold | $883.81 | — | — | — |
| GOOGL Alphabet Inc. | buy | $343.59 | — | — | — |
Let's start with the obvious: $INTC had its best single day since October 29th, 1987 — yes, two days after Black Monday, which is deeply on-brand for Intel's chaotic comeback arc. The stock surged ~24% to a new all-time high, finally eclipsing its dot-com peak, after reporting EPS of $0.29 versus estimates of $0.01 and revenue of $13.6B versus $12.4B expected. Bloomberg, CNBC's Mad Money, and practically every finance channel on YouTube were in rare unanimous agreement: the new CEO is executing, agentic AI is supercharging CPU demand, and Intel is no longer a survival story — it's a supply constraint story. That's a very different sentence to type.
Meanwhile, $AAPL dropped a bombshell: Tim Cook steps down September 1st, handing the keys to hardware engineering chief John Turnus. Dan Ives called Cook a 'Mount Rushmore' level CEO — which is accurate, given he turned a company into a $4 trillion market cap machine. Turnus inherits six new AI-driven product categories in the pipeline, but the real test is whether a hardware guy can win an AI software war. Jury's still very much out. On the Fed front, the DOJ dropped its criminal probe into Jerome Powell — sort of. It transferred to the Inspector General, AG Piro reserved the right to restart it, and Senator Tillis still hasn't released his hold on Kevin Warsh's confirmation. Former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher summarized it perfectly: Warsh would be walking into a 'fog of uncertainty.' Cool job offer, bro.
The SOX semiconductor index just logged its 18th consecutive winning day — the longest streak since the index was formed in 1994 — while consumer sentiment hit an all-time historic low. Stocks at record highs, consumers at record misery. The vibe gap of our generation.