Intel's Comeback... and My Own

Intel is our market microcosm as we follow the price action of its comeback bid.

Why Intel?

Choosing Intel as the focus of a journey to create a new income-stream wasn’t random at all. On one hand, the share price makes it an accessible, practical ticker for building skill and consistency. But on a deeper level, my connection to the company started long before I ever delved into the markets.

My very first encounter with Intel technology was in 1994, serving as the church secretary. I discovered how a computer with “Intel Inside” could help me serve more efficiently. I remember the long nights of preparing financial letters for our 300+ members—manual, tedious, and time-consuming. It was the part of my job I disliked the most.

Then I discovered Microsoft Word mail merge… running on an ugly beige desktop computer. It took forever to pay off the nearly $4,000 machine, but it was all worth it in the end for the time and aggravation it saved. Suddenly, what once took days could be done in hours. It felt like grace—like the Lord showing me that technology can multiply efforts and help me steward my assignment even better. That moment planted a quiet affection for Intel, because it was like I was experiencing technology as a partner in ministry. Intel was literally the company inside the machine helping me accomplish the work I (mostly) loved.

So in some ways, choosing Intel as the “home base” for a project to explore options as an income stream is coming full circle. The same company that helped me all those years ago is the one I am using as a market microcosm teaching tool.

The Story That Pulled Me In

That choice and early appreciation has grown into genuine fascination and enthusiasm. As I started researching Intel with fresh eyes, I stumbled onto a wild, layered story. Today’s Intel is a mix of high stakes politics, corporate crisis, and a deal that changed the government's relationship with one of its biggest tech giants.

The United States government now owns a massive piece of intel, a publicly traded company, and this wasn't some slow, gradual thing. It happened fast.

We're not talking about a small symbolic stake here we are talking about 10%. For a company the size of Intel, that is an enormous level of government ownership. It pretty much makes Uncle Sam the company's number one investor. And this brings us to the core mystery of it all.

Intel's board swears this deal was voluntary, but why give away a 10th of your company? And even weirder, after watering down all the shares, why did the stock market love it? The price actually went up! To figure that out, we've gotta look at the mess Intel was in.

You see, before the government stepped in Intel, which was once the undisputed king of computer chips was in an absolute free fall. People were seriously starting to question if it could even survive.

The problems were deep. Intel had completely lost its manufacturing edge to companies in Taiwan and South Korea. It totally missed the boat on the AI revolution. Nvidia was just eating their lunch. All this led to 6 straight quarters of losing money, which is a historic slump for them, and huge projects were just stuck. The Titan was definitely stumbling and stumbling badly.

So why did Washington care so much? Well, because in the super high stakes world of making semiconductors, Intel was really the only American player left that had a real shot at competing at the top. From a national security point of view, letting intel just fail, that was not an option. It needed to become America's national champion in chips; kind of like what Boeing is for airplanes.

So with the stakes this high, both the Biden and Trump administrations knew Intel needed help, but their ideas on how to help, well, they could not have been more different. It was a classic case of carrots versus sticks.

The Biden Administration's plan was all about the carrots. The CHIPS Act offered billions of dollars in grants, but, and this is a big but… the money was tied to results. Intel had to actually prove it could get its act together. The Trump administration, on the other hand, went for the stick. They threw out the performance goals and instead favored direct pressure.

The whole thing really came to a head. When Intel's board hired a new CEO Lip-Bu Tan. He looked at, the company, saw it was bleeding cash, and his plan was to cut back, lay people off and slow things down.

Then things escalated like incredibly fast. Day one, the CEO announces his plan to cut costs. The very next day, the president is publicly calling for him to resign, pointing to some of his past business deals in China. Three days after that, the CEO is rushing to the White House and just two days later, boom, the deal is announced.

The threat was not subtle at all. I mean, this public statement from President Trump was a direct personal shot at the CEO's integrity, his loyalty. He was basically declared an enemy, highly conflicted with no other solution than for him to just be gone.

The government's investment was like a giant green light for the rest of the market. Suddenly you had other huge players like Nvidia and SoftBank jumping in, pouring billions more into the company. The government's stamp of approval opened the floodgates. And this is why the stock price went up.

Investors weren't just betting on Intel's technology anymore. They were betting on the US government. The thinking was pretty simple with the government as the biggest shareholder. Intel was now officially too important to fail.

Here's the reality check all that cash and all that government backing. It buys intel time. Sure. But it doesn't magically fix the really hard technical problems they have. Intel still has to figure out how to build chips that are as good as, or even better than the ones from TSMC, and you just can't buy that kind of innovation.

So what is Intel now? It's basically become what policy experts call a national champion. That's a company that gets state support, not just because it makes money, but because it's seen as absolutely critical to the country's strategic goals. Its success is now completely tied up with national security.

Why Focus Matters

In a world where the norm is that everything changes… markets shift, narratives swing, and uncertainty “is” the constant, our confidence rests in the One who never changes. When everything around you moves, cling to what doesn’t. Applying that principle to trading means controlling what I can actually control. I can’t control macro shocks, stock splits, global politics, or earnings surprises. But I can control how I study the market.

I can decide whether to chase 50 tickers scattered everywhere… or deeply focus on one company; almost like a market maker.

The Market Makers

Many options exchange market makers specialize in specific tickers or sectors.

This specialization helps them:

• price options more accurately
• manage inventory and hedging more efficiently
• understand that ticker’s “personality” (IV behavior, earnings patterns, news sensitivities, etc.)
• respond faster when order flow hits the book

This “narrow universe” helps them develop pattern memory in exactly the same way I plan to do with Intel. The reward for this will be deep familiarity.

A market maker’s job is to:

• understand one ticker’s volatility rhythms
• know its reaction to news
• feel its expected move ahead of earnings
• memorize its liquidity and order-flow fingerprints
• anticipate where hedging pressure might push or pull price

These advantages come from focus — not from watching many different tickers at once.

Studying one company deeply aligns with how professionals manage risk.

It is NOT amateur.
It is NOT simplistic.

It is professional behavior scaled down to an individual level.

Why Specialization Works

Specialization gives you:

• pattern memory
• confidence
• faster recognition of anomalies
• tighter risk control
• less noise, more clarity
• deep intuition about expected vs abnormal moves

Those are things professionals rely on, while many traders that like different tickers never develop some of those characteristics.

Studying Intel as a market microcosm — is exactly how a market maker becomes excellent at their role.

It’s impossible to master everything. Choosing one corner of the market gives us a better shot at mastering “something” and it’s how the biggest players stay sharp.

Given everything I’ve learned—and everything Intel has meant to me across the years—I believe it is a remarkable company to explore as we follow the price action of its comeback bid.

Peeking Behind the Curtain

As we pull the curtain back on this Intel storyline—government stakes, political pressure, national-champion dynamics—what makes it especially fascinating is how much of the broader market can be seen in miniature inside one company.
Intel is a single ticker where:

• Policy risk, innovation risk, and capital-allocation risk collide
• Global macro themes (China, supply-chain fragility, the AI race) concentrate into one price
• An endearing history and national-security priorities directly influence valuation
• Volatility, narrative shifts, and sentiment whiplash play out with textbook clarity

Intel is the “peek behind the curtain” of the market. It is a controlled environment to study how stories, incentives, volatility, gamma pressure, and policy noise move through a single name.

Intel becomes the lab.

The options chain becomes the microscope and each trade becomes a tiny research sample in a much bigger experiment to generate another stream of income.

By narrowing the lens to one ticker, we gain the ability to watch—up close—how a modern market behaves when geopolitics, innovation cycles, government capital, and trader sentiment all interact in real time.

My approach is to study one company as a window into the whole market. I’m genuinely excited to tag along for Intel’s comeback story as it unfolds here at home, and around the world.

~Lorrinda @sisteradmn