Is Positive Market Sentiment a Tailwind for Intel?

By Susan Ramirez • Wednesday, October 12 17:43 • Permanent Link

Now trading at a price of $25.33 after posting moderate gains today, shares of Intel are -30.51% below their average target price of $36.45. Is the stock ready to reverse its multi-year downwards trend? Not if analysts are to be believed. Analysts are giving INTC an average rating of hold and target prices ranging from $20 to $72 dollars per share.

Overall, ot seems the market sentiment regarding Intel is mostly optimistic, since it has a short interest of only 1.6%. This is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted by investors who are hoping the stock's price will decrease in the future.

When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.

Another way to gauge the sentiment on Intel is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 63.9% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.

Institutions have vast resources. If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.

To sum up, Intel is probably the subject of mostly positive market sentiment because of its an analyst consensus of strong upside potential, a hold rating,, a very low short interest, and an average number of institutional investors. At Market Inference, we believe that any investment decision should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the company's fundamental values and a comparison with similar stocks.

Here's a snapshot of some important facts to keep in mind about INTC:

The stock has trailing 12 month price to earnings (Eps) of $4.66 per share
Intel has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 5.4 compared to the S&P 500 average of 15.97
The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 1.0 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
Intel is a Technology company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 26.5 and 5.57 respectively

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The above analysis is intended for educational purposes only and was performed on the basis of publicly available data. It is not to be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Any buy, sell, or other recommendations mentioned in the article are direct quotations of consensus recommendations from the analysts covering the stock, and do not represent the opinions of Market Inference or its writers. Past performance, accounting data, and inferences about market position and corporate valuation are not reliable indicators of future price movements. Market Inference does not provide financial advice. Investors should conduct their own review and analysis of any company of interest before making an investment decision.