Wow, what a performance! New all-time high's on the Dow. Oh, wait a minute, am I reading this right? What? 16 of the Dow 30 are still below the high's set in 2000!

There's no doubt about it, if you are not in the right sectors, or the right stocks, you are not doing very well.

After Intel's earnings on Tuesday afternoon, four brokerage firms came out with their ratings on the stock. Obviously, INTC has been a great trade. Buy the stock below $19.50, and traded out around $21-22.

Here's how the analysts rated INTC after their earnings report;

Deutsche Bank- Buy, PT $25
Cowen & Co.- Outperform- no PT
Credit Suisse- Underperform- PT $18.50
Prudential Financial- Underweight- PT $16

Boy, this is enough to give you some real conviction, isn't it? Here is some conviction for you.

Unless I am very wrong, INTC is not a play on the rest of the world and not the U.S... The same can be said for AMD. For the past few months the "experts" were telling you to keep your hands off AMD, and to buy INTC. I think, longer term, both stocks were buys at these levels;

INTC- $19.50 or less
AMD- $12.50 or less

INTC was a play on MSFT's vista launch which turned out to be a bust. Why was vista a bust? Experts are telling me that Microsoft came out with vista in an attempt to see and control what you are doing on your computer. I am in the process of upgrading my PC, and I was told by a very good source to stay away from vista, and use XP instead.

My source also told me that Intel's more powerful chip's are needed to run vista. If IT experts in corporate America are familiar with vista's snooping capability, they may not upgrade their software which means INTC & AMD will not experience a buying boom just yet.

If you consider that both INTC and AMD were trading at lower levels, and insiders were not buying, that should tell you something too.

Intel Insider Trades
AMD Insider Trades

I think the best way to play both stocks is to sell some out of the money puts, and let the stocks come to you.