"It appears that Wall Street is finally beginning to see the strength of the Intel story and possibly even gaining some respect for its CEO, Paul Otellini.

"I've not been shy when it comes to praising Otellini's strategy and the results he has driven both in the sweeping cultural changes he implemented at INTC and the products the new operating model has produced.

"I think that when we look back at INTC some years from now, Otellini will be judged to be at least the second best CEO in the company's history and maybe even on par with or better than my all-time favorite, Andy Grove.

"One of the many issues that I've written about more frequently than I want to remember is that Wall Street simply doesn't understand INTC's game.

"While I think we'll see a continued downtrend in average selling prices for microprocessors driven by the wider adoption of netbooks, nettops and emerging MID's (Mobile Internet Devices),

"I think Wall Street is just beginning to embrace INTC's ability to leverage both scalable operations and its world leading fabrication abilities to maintain profit margins.

"After all, it's INTC that is driving these prices down ahead of the competitive threats that we'll see hit the netbook and MID markets during the second half.

"In December, I reiterated my prediction that we'll see not only new classes of computing and communications devices this year with 'Intel Inside,' but also TV's and set-top-boxes based on x86 designs.

"I expect there will be a resurgence in demand from INTC's core PC and server markets in the second half of 2009. If I'm right in these forecasts, I think the $20 price target I offered for INTC in the second half of 2009 will prove to be conservative.

"As to Hewlett-Packard, you would be hard pressed to find a bigger fan of CEO Mark Hurd than I me. I jumped on the Hurd bandwagon only months after he took the job.

"The simple story here is that Hurd hit the ground running and after only a few strides it was obvious to me he was making the right decisions.

"Based on what we've seen Hurd accomplish since taking the helm at HPQ and my vision of what the company could do through its acquisition of EDS, I applauded the decision even though it resulted in shredding the company's balance sheet.

"The short story here is that HPQ has the persistent profitability to manage it and, in my view, will be able to significantly leverage synergies with EDS. The services business is extremely profitable and it is an industry where scale is very important.

"In addition to these benefits, I also believe HPQ will be able to leverage the expanded services pipeline to sell its legacy products to a substantially broader customer base.

"Cisco's recent announcement that it is entering the server market as a part of its new virtualized data center strategy clearly adds risk to the HPQ equation. However, with risk there is always opportunity and that is where highly skilled leaders make the difference between failure and success.

"I think that from the top down, CSCO's move has put the data center 'in play.' In other words, I think the move will be followed by some acquisitions and consolidation amongst the other players.

"Aside from strengthening its data center position with an acquisition, there are other strengths HPQ has over the CSCO threat; remember, in the services industry, with the EDS acquisition under its belt, HPQ is now on par with sector leader IBM.

"And when you are running services for not only major corporations, but even entire countries, as Hewlett-Packard is doing, you've got considerable influence over hardware and software buying decisions. That is a position of strength not even CSCO can rival.

"Based on this thinking and my belief that HPQ's dividend, albeit modest, is secure, I think the stock merits consideration from long-term investors as a strategic holding and accumulation while trading in the low $30's.

"Motorola boomed with the popularity of the RAZR and when it became old hat, the stock died with it and the company has since failed to produce a single top ten hit.

"However, I like a couple of the new handsets MOT is showing now and think that at the current price it wouldn't take much of a hit to provide a 50% upside.

"It was no surprise when MOT announced earlier this year it would suspend its modest dividend. The company has been bleeding for a long time.

"And even though it had paid a dividend for nearly 250 consecutive quarters, until it gets its business under control, it no longer made sense to fake it was by paying a dividend from a balance sheet sporting a negative net current asset value.

"There are a lot of ways to look at a business and how it has been managed or, in the case of MOT, mismanaged for years. One is to say that management has two jobs – one is to focus resources where there is an optimal return and then to leverage them to multiply the effect.

"MOT was doing neither when Sanjay Jha took over as co-CEO and co-Chairman (he is the CEO of the mobile products division). However, after talking with people who know Jha, it sounds to me that he is exactly the type of CEO MOT needs.

"Jha came to MOT after a long stint at Qualcomm, a company that could write the book on focusing and leveraging resources.

"According to my resources, Jha is not only brilliant as a businessman and engineer (he has a PhD in electrical engineering), he also has an extraordinary talent for getting the most from his people and maintaining a laser like focus on accomplishment."

Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com offers a free daily overview of the favorite stock picks and investment ideas from the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors.