The 10 top-searched stocks of 2014: Intel is No 7
It used to be a fact universally acknowledged that slow-growth tech stocks were the investment equivalent of the friend zone. Tech stocks were, by definition, supposed to be sexy and fast growing and investors who wanted slow-growth-style returns weren’t going to invest in tech – they were going to invest in Dow stocks and industrials.
That was before 2014. In 2014, the world seemed switch gears.
“This was a great year for old tech, and Intel is about as old tech as you can get right now in the Nasdaq,” said Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli. That's probably what made Intel Corporation (INTC) the seventh most-searched stock of the year on Yahoo. That could be because Main Street investors like the dividends. But it’s also because, as Santoli points out, semiconductors are the new industrials.
Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App
“Intel [had] a monster, breakout year just making chips and really not much else,” said Jeff Macke. But making chips might be enough. “In the new economy, the big idea is that silicon will be the new copper. They used to say it was all about ‘Dr. Copper’ [as an indicator] declaring what the economy is gonna do. Now if you look at wafer prices and silicon you can see what’s happening.”
One reason for this is mobile devices. As Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task points out, Intel doesn’t just make chips for personal computers, which has been a shrinking market for several years. “Intel chips, they’re in mobile devices as well.”
So if you do decide to invest in Intel, Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman warns, “It’s a mixed play. Are you betting on the old PC business hanging in or the new one filling in? I don’t like it either way.”
As far as what the analysts are saying this month, there are three sells, 5 underperforms, a whopping 18 holds, 13 buys and six strong buys, so a mixed play there as well.
More of the top-searched stocks of 2014: