The Intel Corporation is underpriced

AMD'S SHARE price continues to ride high on the NYSE bourse, even though it faces challenges supplying enough chips to its customers. The word here is allocation - good news for AMD. But like a double edged sword, it cuts both ways. If a system integrator has got orders for PCs and he or she can't get the chips from AMD, she or will try and dummy the buyer with the alternative. Just as well there is one, then.

Meanwhile a few "analysts" from Wall Street cut Intel's share price from buy to hold last week - and tells experienced folk that there's still money to be made on semiconductor stocks.

AMD closed Friday at $40.54 - there is nothing like demand to keep share prices up. Intel closed Friday at $20.36. When the institutions start selling AMD shares they are set to make a killing, which may be good for people that still believe stocks and shares are a good place to put their pension money when they're getting older and losing their hair.

Indeed, it's worth looking at the 10 largest institutional shareholders in Tweedledum, TweedleAMD and, er, Transmeta, just for the sake of comparison.

	AMD	Intel	Transmeta
1	Janus Cap Mgmt	Barclays	Pequot
2	Oppenheimer	Fidelity	Barclays
3	Capital Research	State Str Corp	Vanguard
4	Axa Financial	Vanguard Group	Geode Cap
5	Fidelity	Mellon Bank	Calif Public
6	Barclays Bank	Northern Trust	Jacobs Levy
7	Vanguard	Deutsche BK	Northern Trust
8	State Str Corp	AXA Financial	Fuller Thaler
9	Calamos	College Retire	Mellon Bank
10	TCW Asset Mgt	T Rowe Price	State Str Corp

Data compiled from sources including Yahoo Finance, Dow Jones

State Street Corporation (tick: STT) includes amongst its top 10 institutional investors T. Rowe Price Associates, Fidelity, Barclays, Capital Research Management, Vanguard Group, and the Northern Trust Corporation.

The whole point of this is to show that whether Intel's Conroe, Merom, and Woodcrest will beat AMD's future offerings is really rather academic to the financial guys. A look at Nvidia's (tick: NVDA) shows its top 10 includes Fidelity, Calamos, Vanguard, Barclays, State Street Corp, Mellon and Janus too.

To take one example. Fidelity owns eight million NVDA shares, 212 million INTC shares, and 20 million AMD shares. Perhaps a league table of which of the big investors is getting in or getting out of these four chip firms would give us a better idea of where the chips will be down on the Wall Street wheel of fortune? Are the big financial guys, er, hedging their bets? Follow the money. µ