The chip sector is pretty hot. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) reported a respectable quarter this week, and the stock is near a 52-week high. Also close to their highs of the year are Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD).

Well, you can add Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) to the list. The company, an expert on programmable logic, reported an earnings-beating quarter yesterday after the bell, according to Reuters. Xilinx made 23 cents per share in Q2, a penny ahead of analyst expectations. Revenue likewise was slightly ahead of the projections.

National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM) reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday after the bell. Net sales came in at $314 million, and net income was 13 cents per diluted share. According to our earnings preview, that 13-cent profit beat analyst expectations by a whopping six pennies. I'll tell you, I always enjoy when a company can beat by a little more than the boring penny. The top line also went beyond projections. The call was for roughly $300 million in sales.

Although these numbers represented steep drops when compared to year-ago data, it should be noted that, on a sequential basis, National Semiconductor showed significant improvement. Gross margin went up sequentially on better product mix and a benefit from a plant closing in China.

Today was a low volatility day considering what we have seen lately. The oil inventories and jobs data, combined with a wider deficit data, did not shake markets and traders. Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,627.48 +80.26 (0.84%)
S&P 500 1,044.14 +10.77 (1.04%)
Nasdaq 2,084.02 +23.63 (1.15%)

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Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), whose peers include Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), reported results for the second quarter after the bell on Monday. As can be expected, the statistics weren't great. However, there were a couple silver linings.

Revenues declined 27%. Earnings per share dropped a whopping 55%, coming in at 20 cents. Excluding items, Texas Instruments made 25 cents per share. Reuters says this is two pennies above analyst expectations.

As expected, chip maker National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM), whose colleagues include Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), lost money during its fourth quarter.

However, the loss wasn't as bad as feared. According to Trey Thoelcke's earnings preview, National Semiconductor could have lost up to 42 cents per share. Thankfully, according to the company's press release posted on Thursday after the bell, the business only lost 28 cents per share.

How thankful should we be? I must point out that the company earned 34 cents per share in last year's Q4 period. Also, sales dropped 39% during the past three months. Not only that, but cash from operations from the full fiscal year was down, as was the gross margin on a year-over-year basis (the gross margin increased, however, on a sequential basis compared to the third quarter, so that was a bright spot).

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), whose colleagues include Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), gave shareholders quite a boost in morale on Monday. The chip company issued a nice outlook for the bottom line.

Here are the stats. Net sales in Q2 should come in between $2.3 billion and $2.5 billion versus the old guidance of between $1.95 billion and $2.4 billion. The bottom line should come in between 14 cents per share and 22 cents per share, versus previous estimates of between 1 cent per share and 15 cents per share.

"Golf has Tiger Woods, novelists have Tom Clancy, and the investment community has stars such as Bruce Berkowitz, Bill Nygren, Charlie Dreifus, and Mario Gabelli," states Paul Tracy.

In his The Street Authority Market Advisor, he suggests, "These money managers are at the pinnacle of their craft." Here, he takes a look at these "celebrities" and some of their current top stock holdings.

"These money managers have all amassed prodigious gains over the years for their shareholders. Over the past few months, these gurus have come out with ringing endorsements for certain stocks. This isn't empty talk -- they are putting their money where their mouth is.

Today we finally got this massive oversold rally. Citi's call of profitability and a combined SEC review of short sales via the uptick rule and some modifications to mark to market accounting led the way.

That being said, the markets took this as added good news to what has so far only been a sea of red. Unfortunately, this was probably the lightest day of individual stock news in weeks. Here are the unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 6,880.78 +333.73 (5.10%)
S&P 500 719.60 +43.07 (6.37%)
Nasdaq 1,358.28 +89.64 (7.07%)

Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades

Yesterday, tech beast Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) announced that it will narrow its revenue forecast for the first quarter. The firm now expects revenue to total $1.79 billion to $2.05 billion. TXN earlier predicted revenue between $1.62 billion and $2.12 billion.

TXN added a revision to its earnings forecast as well, stating that it expects to report anywhere from a loss of 8 cents per share to break even earnings. This range is also a clarification of the company's earlier forecast range of a loss of 11 cents per share to 3-cent-per-share earnings.

Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), which competes with Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), reported Q1 numbers after the bell on Wednesday. The data continue to show that all is not well with the world.

Demand for Qualcomm's products is down, and as far as management is concerned, earnings visibility just isn't in the cards due to the financial mess and its effect on the company's marketable securities. Talk about not inspiring confidence.

For the first quarter, Qualcomm delivered pro forma earnings per share of $0.31. That represented an ugly drop of 40% on a year-over-year basis. Revenues inched up 3% to $2.5 billion. The top line beat expectations, but the bottom line didn't come anywhere close as Wall Street was counting on $0.47 per share. Then again, what did any of us expect? It's tough out there in the world.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN) rallied 4% Tuesday in the wake of its fourth-quarter earnings report. The report itself wasn't exactly a thing of beauty, but was better than expected, and investors seemed to like the company's efforts to reduce costs in the face of continuing weak demand.

Investors' optimism carried over to the broader market, and the tech-laden Nasdaq gained more than 1%.

For the quarter, the world's third-largest chip maker said it earned 21 cents per share, excluding 13 cents per share of restructuring charges. Revenue declined to $2.49 billion from $3.56 billion a year ago, but both top-line and bottom-line numbers came in ahead of analysts' expectations, prompting Tuesday's rally.

Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), a famous name in the wireless industry whose colleagues include Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN), and Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK), reported earnings for the fourth quarter on Thursday. While the stock may be up today, I'm not so sure I'd be a buyer of it.

It's not that the bottom-line numbers were wholly bad. Net profit rose 16% to roughly $1.1 billion. Earnings per diluted share on an adjusted basis increased 17% to $0.63. According this news source, that figure beat estimates by three pennies. That's all well and good, but that news source also states that Qualcomm is guiding below consensus. Not surprising, certainly, given what the markets are going through. But it still puts a damper on the stock's near-term potential, in my opinion. Plus, free cash flow was down 13% during the quarter, and it was flat for the twelve-month period.

Except for certain companies like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), I'm not really interested in playing the tech sector. If you had purchased Qualcomm near its 52-week low of $30.87, I'd be a seller into today's strength. No, I certainly can't predict the movement of stock prices, but I can tell you that I think Qualcomm could easily pull back from today's rally. The recession is going to worsen, and I don't think we've reached the point where the market will begin to discount better days. In fact, we're probably far off from that point. The rally that is going on in the markets as I write this (and by the time this gets published, it could be gone for all I know) feels like a dead-cat bounce. That wouldn't be good for Qualcomm's stock, I'd imagine. So, kudos to management for beating Q4 expectations. But I won't be rewarding you by buying your stock. Sorry!

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Minyanville contributor Adam Katz dares to share the kind of keen insight and actionable information you won't find in any prospectus. For more original thought, visit www.minyanville.com.

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) reported disappointing results and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) preannounced negatively. Last week, IBM (NYSE: IBM) followed through with their positive preannouncement and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) outperformed expectations.

What we are seeing is a divergence in where dollars are flowing. With company web sites largely representing the most effective and quantifiable marketing tool, it should come as no surprise that GOOG has revenue streams that are reasonably insulated. (This is not a call on GOOG because I believe the market is also pricing in the fact that the hyper growth days are behind them).

With respect to IBM, infrastructure software has been the primary driver behind the top line growth and growth in margins. In the meantime, the disappointment that we are seeing from TXN and JAVA should be reasonably expected as you are seeing slowing demand for hardware (in part driven by virtualization which by definition lowers hardware requirements) and TXN which, leveraged to consumer communication devices, is also taking a pause.

So the sky isn't falling.

Corporate earnings aren't that bad and are surprising analysts. Oil prices are falling just as quickly as they rose. If you are a contrarian investor, you must have a big grin on your face.

Common wisdom had it that markets were going to keep dropping, that the price of crude would hit $200 a barrel, and that bank after bank would go bankrupt. But what's happened? The opposite. Bank earnings aren't as bad a feared, crude has fallen to under $130 and suddenly investors are a bit more optimistic.

Even when we get bad news, like earnings from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) and others, the market is able to hold up. Industries that just a week ago were being left for dead suddenly came roaring back to life. For investors who like to dabble in out of favor stocks, this market is a dream come true. Battered sectors such as financials, airlines, and even autos have surged over the last week. Who would have dreamed that airline stocks would actually stage a rally? What's interesting is that even with their recent move these sectors are all still trading significantly off their highs, meaning that potentially we have much more room to run.

Semiconductor company Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) reported results for the second quarter, and the stock sold off during the after-hours session on Monday. At one point shares were down 11%.

I can sort of see why this happened. It wasn't an exciting earnings release at all, especially in a bad market. First, the top line decreased by about 2% to $3.35 billion. Earnings from continuing operations on a diluted basis grew by only 5% to 42 cents per share. Operational cash flow declined by 42% to $520 million. Nope, not my kind of earnings release, let me tell you. Texas Instruments doesn't seem to have the right stuff in terms of bottom-line growth. Management pointed out that the challenging economy has led to weak demand. Also, let me add that, according to this article, the results missed estimates by two pennies.

I don't really want to own Texas Instruments here. If I had to buy a tech stock, I'd be more inclined to look at a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) or an Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Apple also reported earnings on Monday and saw its shares slide after delivering a much stronger quarter than the one delivered by Texas Instruments. That about says it all, doesn't it?

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.