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Time To Get Back Into Intel

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Wednesday, Feb 18, 2026 - 8:42

Intel and reindustrialization imagery.

Time To Get Back Into Intel

Over the last year, we’ve come back to the same simple macro story again and again: Washington is serious about reindustrializing the U.S., building out AI infrastructure at home, and reshoring the capabilities that go with that—especially semiconductor manufacturing. That was the logic behind our first trade in Intel last fall: if the U.S. is going to treat advanced chips as a strategic asset, and the federal government is willing to take an actual equity stake in a “national champion” to make that happen, it makes sense to have some upside exposure there. We laid that trade out in detail here:

In that first Intel trade, we used a 3-leg combo to “swing for the fences,” and it paid off. We ended up exiting the trade for a 255% gain on premium outlay (140% on max risk), as we detailed in our January 23rd Exits post.

Shortly after we exited our trade, Intel reported Q4 2025 earnings: it actually beat expectations on Q4 revenue and EPS, but guided Q1 2026 to breakeven non-GAAP earnings and $11.7–$12.7 billion in revenue—below what the street wanted—and warned that supply constraints would limit its ability to meet surging AI data-center demand. Investors who had driven the stock up sharply in January seized on that cautious outlook and the supply bottlenecks as an excuse to take profits, and the stock dropped on the order of the mid-teens percentage-wise over the next couple of sessions, even though the demand story and the government-backed reindustrialization push hadn’t changed. (Intel Corporation)

Once Intel reported and sold off, we wanted to get back in—but we didn’t right away, because this year’s tape has been unforgiving, and Intel didn’t yet pass the tighter technical screens we’ve been applying in 2026. Now it does. As of Tuesday’s close, Intel was Portfolio Armor’s #1 name, with an estimated 6-month potential return of 76%.

Since December 2022, across 138 rolling 6-month periods, our weekly top ten names have averaged about 20.39% over the next six months, versus roughly 10.18% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY 0.00%↑) over the same windows—nearly double SPY’s performance. On top of that, Intel now passes our stricter technical filters, with an RSI in the mid-40s and a Chartmill setup rating of 6 out of 10, suggesting the stock isn’t overextended here. Put those together—top-ranked on expected return, aligned with our reindustrialization/AI build-out theme, and technically reasonable—and it makes sense for us to place another bullish options trade on Intel today, using an options structure designed to benefit from the current market’s whipsaw volatility.

A Second Reindustrialization Trade

Our second trade today comes from our Market Watchers X list. It’s a smaller industrial company that makes the unglamorous but essential piping and thermal infrastructure you need to move hot and cold fluids around factories, refineries, and datacenters—exactly the kind of “picks and shovels” business that can benefit when countries decide to build more physical stuff again. Here too, we’re expressing that view with a hybrid options structure that lets us finance longer-dated upside by selling near-term premium against a defined floor.

If you'd like a heads up when we place those trades later today, you can subscribe to the Portfolio Armor Substack below. 

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