Jester,

I agree completely - a 9.5% rise in a company this large is not something to complain about - esp. since I was braced for a hit, given their recent widespread security troubles and the big stock sale by Kraznich. (Which is funny in itself, because, at the moment,  that selling action looks mighty stupid - stupid, the market can live with that. Dishonest is a different story. Wonder how all the legal firms looking to cash in with already-pending class action investor suits are going to spin this - that the CEO sold big and lost big money? Perhaps they'll find a niggle such as malfeasance in not knowing there were basic security flaws (I don't that'll fly far), or even more obscure, the performance hit that owners of INTC processors have had to suffer (as if that was a 'design flaw.'

And in truth, I have to think of INTC as a market 'darling' - The street seems to give them the benefit of the doubt - in all their tribulations of the past few years, they're now at an all-time high. The point being that were it another company, (take GE for instance) it might've taken a lot more skepticism and price hit. In Intel we trust; all others pay cash.

And also, in truth, as I think I mentioned, the divergence between rewarding the successful and punishing the laggards seems outsized to me right now. Abbvie, a pharmaceutical company that makes Humira, reported blowout kind of numbers and is up over 11%. I thought their valuation was rather rich already, given their appreciation over time, but the market likes it even better. Fine by me.