🧠 Weekend Deep Dive: Intel (INTC) Under Pressure, What Comes Next?

Full chart breakdown and trading ideas after Intel’s 18A drama sends shares into uncertain territory.

Hello traders and investors,

It’s the weekend — and I’ve got a full breakdown on Intel Corp. ($INTC) lined up. There’s no shortage of headlines around this one, and the chart is just as interesting as the news cycle right now. In today’s weekend edition, I’m going to walk through what’s happening with the company, what the chart is showing us, and how I’d consider trading it as both a short-term position and a long-term investment — bullish or bearish, depending on the setup.

Let’s dig into the story first, then break down what I see technically — and where things could go from here.

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📰 The Story: Intel’s Strategy Wobbles Again

Intel ($INTC) can’t seem to catch a break.

This week, shares slid after Reuters reported that new CEO Lip-Bu Tan is mulling over the possibility of ditching the Intel 18A process for external customers. That’s a major development, because 18A was a cornerstone of the former CEO Pat Gelsinger’s grand plan to position Intel as a foundry rival to TSMC. Scrapping it would mean a pivot away from selling high-end chip capacity to outside clients like Amazon and Microsoft — and that’s not the kind of signal investors wanted.

The company fired back, saying the report was speculative, and that it’s still planning to launch Panther Lake (18A-based) chips in the back half of 2025 — but that wasn’t enough to calm the market.

There’s a lot going on here — cost-cutting, layoffs, divestitures, and strategic pivots. Tan seems to be stripping the company down to essentials, trimming fat, and trying to focus on what Intel does well. But every time there’s a new headline, the stock reacts, and that’s creating a pretty noisy tape. So… let’s quiet the noise and just look at the chart.

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📊 Chart Analysis

First things first — we’ve got a short-term uptrend intact, but it’s running into some key technical resistance.

Here’s what I see:

• Price Action: $INTC closed Friday at $22.49, holding up well after bouncing off the 10-day SMA, which is now acting as short-term support. The 50-day and 200-day SMAs are both sloping upward now — a bullish sign — with the 50-day currently sitting around $21.00 and the 200-day further below at $20.27. That puts the stock in a healthy, supportive zone for the time being.

• Support and Resistance:

  • Near-term support sits at $21.00, just under the 50-day.

  • Deeper support comes in at $17.66, the year-to-date low — a pretty big drop from here, but good to keep on your radar.

  • Resistance shows up around $23.86 — a level the stock failed to clear in mid-June.

  • The next level above that sits at $25.26, which would require some real buying strength and a clean breakout above recent highs.

• Volume: It’s been picking up slightly, but nothing explosive yet. A big move higher or lower would need a confirmation push in volume, and that hasn’t materialized — yet.

• RSI: 57 This is middle of the road — not overbought, not oversold — and it’s actually in a good position to support either a continuation or a healthy pullback before resuming. Think of this like a "no-man’s land" for RSI, where momentum isn’t screaming anything extreme. It’s neutral to bullish.

• MACD: The MACD line is still trending above the signal, but the histogram is flattening out. That’s something to watch — momentum could be losing steam.

• Stochastics: Still elevated, but curling downward — suggesting the stock might cool off a bit after the recent rally. This doesn’t scream reversal yet, but it’s a caution light. If it dips below 70, traders may take some short-term profits.

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🔍 How I’d Trade It