The markets had a relatively flat day to start the week, but there were some big name stocks that traded up to new 52 week highs in today's session. The DOW was up 0.2%, NASDAQ was down 0.01%, while the S&P saw the most change, closing up 0.4%.

Here are a couple of the bigger names that traded up to new 52 week highs in today's trading.

• Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC): Chipmaker Intel Corp. traded up to a new 52 week high today of $20.65. It set its 52 week low of $12.05 back on 2/23/09. The stock is trading higher today ahead of the company's third quarter earnings numbers, which are due out tomorrow following the market close. Analysts are expecting the company to show earnings of 27 cents per share. The company reported a loss of 7 cents per share for its second quarter. The stock closed the day up 1.1% at $20.40, up $0.23 on the day.

After the closing bell tolled yesterday afternoon, chipmaker Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced that its profit fell 52% in the second quarter. The chipmaker's profit was pushed lower thanks to falling sales and increasing taxes. During the quarter, ALTR saw net income decrease to 16 cents per share compared to last year's 32 cents per share. While the results fell short of those from a year ago, ALTR managed to match the consensus estimate of 16 cents per share. Revenue dropped to $279.2 million from $359.9 million a year ago - estimates called for $277.6 million in revenue. According to the company, a court ruling increased ALTR's tax costs by four cents per share. The court ruling stemmed from worldwide equity compensation cost sharing, and although the company wasn't involved in the case, it decided to increase its tax responsibilities.

Marvell Technology Group (NASDAQ: MRVL) late Thursday announced first-quarter earnings, excluding items, of a nickel per share, matching the Street's expectations. A year ago, the chipmaker earned 24 cents per share. Quarterly revenue fell 34% to $521.4 million, far short of last year's $804.8 million but better than the consensus estimate.

Unfortunately for Marvell, the revenue expectations on the Street were actually higher, calling for "anywhere from $530 to $540 million," which is "why, when revenue came in at $520 million, although it was better than guidance, it was below the whisper expectations," Barclay's Capital analyst Romit Shah explained.

It has been widely anticipated that the EU would bring new antitrust charges against Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). The FTC and other US authorities are chasing the largest chip company in the world for similar reasons. South Korea has already fined Intel for anti-competitive behavior.

The theory behind the charges is that Intel induced PC companies and their retailers to use its chips and not those from rival AMD (NYSE: AMD). According to The Wall Street Journal, "The European Union launched new antitrust charges against Intel Corp., saying the chip giant paid rebates to a major retailer to encourage it not to carry computers using chips from smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc ."

If the charges are true, it shows the extent to which a company of real size, like Intel, can be its own worst enemy. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ran into similar problems a decade ago for being too aggressive killing off competition in the browser and media player markets.

The irony of Intel's legal bind is that it almost certainly did not need to pressure or give incentives to keep AMD in a distant second place. It had the balance sheet to keep margin pressure on AMD and the engineering prowess to offer better chips.

Arrogance and carelessness often go with being in first place. This time it appears that it has caught up to Intel.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) today reported better-than-expected second quarter results, allaying fears that the economic slowdown would hurt the world's largest chipmaker.

Net income rose 25% to $1.6 billion, or 28 cents and sales jumped 9.1% to $9.47 billion, beating analysts' expectations of profit of 26 cents on revenue of $9.33 billion. The company even gave robust guidance of $10 billion to $10.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected sales of $10.01 billion. Shares of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company rose in after-hours trading along with other tech bellwethers such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

"Intel had another strong quarter with revenue at the high end of expectations and earnings up substantially year over year," said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO, in the earnings release. "As we enter the second half, demand remains strong for our microprocessor and chipset products in all segments and all parts of the globe."

AMD (NYSE:AMD) announced its sixth straight loss. For the first quarter of 2008, the company reported a net loss of $358 million, or 59 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $611 million, or $1.11 a share, for the year-earlier period.

MarketWatch writes "Revenue was $1.5 billion, up from $1.23 billion for the year-ago period. Analysts had expected the chipmaker to report a loss of 48 cents a share on revenue of $1.52 billion, according to FactSet Research."

The company's survival as an independent company remains at stake. The firm said that second quarter results would be down.

AMD still carries long-term debt of over $5 billion and with operating losses it remains difficult to see how the company can attack an amount of that magnitude while still investing aggressively in R&D. Larger rival Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has the balance sheet and cash flow to continue to launch new chips, many of which have features superior to those of AMD products.

AMD may have only two choice now. One would be to sell the company to a more successful chip operation like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). The other is to auction off its graphics chip operation ATI, and hope that it can get enough money to help take down a large portion of its long-term debt obligations.

Either way, AMD is unlikely to look that same as it does now by the end of the year.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Poor Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD). The company's stock has been a terrible performer as of late, and the chip maker delivered another batch of bad news to shareholders Monday. According to the following article, AMD intends on eliminating 10% of its work force -- this translates to about 1,800 positions.

Also, business is pretty weak; AMD announced that its sales for the recent quarter would come in around 15% lighter than what was reported last year at this time. Adding insult to injury, the top line missed the expectations of analysts; Wall Street was looking for approximately $1.6 billion in net sales -- AMD thinks it will deliver $1.5 billion.

Make no mistake, AMD is suffering. As the article makes clear, the chip maker is having a hard time generating profits. AMD will be trying its best, I'm sure, to restructure its operations so that it will once again be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. But how near is near?

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) does not seem to be satisfied with the beating it's giving AMD (NYSE:AMD). It wants to bring out an even larger line of chips aimed straight at its rival.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the chip company "gave new details of plans to introduce chips that pack four, six, eight or more electronic brains on a piece of silicon to boost calculating performance."

AMD has a new quad-core chip called Barcelona, and many of the company's plans to recover market share are based on the product.

Intel's new products will make PCs run much faster and will also give its a stronger case in the server market. Some of the new chips are particularly good at running graphics, a market that AMD's ATI unit has done well in over the years. The other company with a large foothold in that industry is Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA).

All of the chip companies have been hurt over the last six months based on the assumption that a slowdown in the economy will cut into PC sales growth. But, Intel is off less than its rivals. Its stock is down less than 20% over the period while AMD and Nvidia are both off more than 40%.

Intel can weather a tough market. It has the balance sheet and gross margins to hold on and spend huge sums on the R&D effort which is behind its newest products. AMD, carrying $5 billion in debt and with no profits, faces real problems keeping up.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) stock is trading lower this morning after an analyst at Banc of America Securities downgraded the stock to "Neutral" from "Buy," pointing to weak seasonality in the first half of 2008. Banc of America downgraded seven other chipmakers, including Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) and National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: NSM), taking a more cautious stance on the semiconductor industry due to slightly higher inventory levels, the likelihood of weak seasonality, and a potential macroeconomic slowdown. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on INTC.

After hitting a one-year low of $18.75 in March, the stock hit a one-year high of $27.99 in December. So far today the stock has hit a low of $25.38 and a high of $26.34. As of 11:05, INTC is trading at $25.47, down $1.19 (-4.4%). The chart for INTC looks bullish but deteriorating, while S&P gives the stock a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy rating.

For a bearish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an April bear-call credit spread above the $30 range. A bear-call credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of call options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make an 11.6% return in 4 months as long as INTC is below $30 at April expiration. Intel would have to rise by more than 21% before we would start to lose money.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) continues to beat up on beleaguered smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD), and the world's largest chip maker has now upped its outlook for the third quarter, as laptop computer sales increase and Intel takes back some market share it lost to AMD in 2006.

Intel's third quarter revenue outlook is $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion, up from its earlier projection of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion. Intel also stated that it expects gross margin to be about 52% in the quarter. With analysts already pegging Q3 sales at $9.33 billion, this increased outlook from the chip giant is great news for investors, although CEO Paul Otellini did not expand on the specifics around the increase other than to hint at increased forecasts of PC shipments for the quarter.

This makes sense, as Intel's rising market share will sail along with those increased shipments if in fact they materialize as forecast. But remember, the holiday shopping season is coming up, and the consumer segment is the hot one in PC sales right now, not the corporate segment. Come holiday shopping time, laptop shipments are set to blaze once again. Add in Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) growing Mac sales -- which now all ship with Intel chips -- and there you go.

After Intel gained about 6% of share from AMD in the first quarter of 2007, the company regained enough of the market to pin AMD with the lowest market share in more than a decade. Intel's Core Duo chips are increasingly shipping in mid-range and higher-end laptop systems, even with AMD's Turion dual-core chips in the same market segment and shipping with all major laptop brands. Come October 16, we'll see how Intel fared in the current quarter, but right now the chipmaker's return to former glory is definitely on track, much to the chagrin of AMD.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC ) today reported second quarter results that surpassed Wall Street's already high expectations.

Net income increased to $1.28 billion, or 22 cents a share, from $885 million, or 15 cents, a year earlier while revenue advanced 8.4 percent to $8.68 billion, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said in a press release. Analysts had expected the company to earn 19 cents on revenue of $8,54 billion. Shares of the world's largest chipmaker at first rose in after hours but later sold off because of concerns about the gross margins.

Intel said gross margins were 46.9 percent, below the 48 percent it had targetted. That is a key metric that investors watch, so that's why the shares are off about 4 percent. Maybe they will rebound after this evenings earnings conference call.

Nonetheless, investors expect better things to come as Intel continues to gain market share at the expense of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) and benefits from rising IT spending outside the U.S.

"Revenue is going to ramp up dramatically in the second half of the year,'' said Graham Tanaka, president of Tanaka Capital Management in New York, in an interview with Bloomberg News. ``Investors are seeing in the end market that there is a firming in demand and that they're gaining market share.''

The company also gave bullish guidance. It sees third quarter revenue of between $9 billion and $9.6 billion with gross margins of about 52 percent. Analysts had expected revenue of $9.36 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Shares of Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) soared more than 28% this year as the chipmaker recouped ground it had lost to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD). At least five Wall Street analysts have raised their ratings on the stock since the start of the year and there's a good chance that their estimates may be overly conservative.

Just how conservative will be apparent later today when the world's largest chipmaker reports second quarter results. Analysts expect earnings of 29 cents on revenue of $8.54 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Revenue is expected to rise 6.6% in the quarter and 4.6% for the year. That seems a little light considering the expected growth in IT spending in places like Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then there's Intel's new Pennryn family of processors expected next year and the Nehalem processor design.

"We believe that Penryn and Nehalem will challenge AMD, which now has approximately 12 months to bring a new product into the market that leverages its October 2006 merger with ATI," according to an April Gartner report.
"Moreover, AMD must invest smartly to deal with Intel's capital infrastructure or risk falling significantly behind Intel in manufacturing technology and processor design."

But hope spring eternal for Intel shareholders. The stock will get crushed by even the tiniest disappointment. Investors might use such an occurrence as a buying opportunity because like other tech stocks it will come back into fashion within six months.

Well I was right on this one -- I was expecting Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) to make $0.22 a share and -- after a reversal of previously accrued taxes which boosted earnings by 5 cents a share -- Intel met analysts' expectations.

While Brian White is providing the details of the conference call, here are some of the highlights. Intel first-quarter profit rose 19% and revenue slid at a slower pace than last year. Specifically, Intel's net income increased to $1.61 billion, or 27 cents a share, from $1.36 billion, or 23 cents, a year earlier. Revenue slipped 1% to $8.85 billion, following a 9% drop last year.

Intel beat its gross margin forecast -- it made 50.1% and forecast 49%. And it predicts a 48% margin in the future -- an uncomfortable drop.

But investors seem to like the results. Shares were up 1.4% during trading today and rose another 2% after-hours.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Intel.