Intel Slides as TSMC Circles Musk’s Texas Terafab
Shares pulled back after weekend reports that TSMC is in talks to join Elon Musk’s Terafab chip project, clouding Intel’s foundry comeback story even as a surprisingly weak jobs report reshuffled the rate outlook.
Market Snapshot
All figures are indicative opening levels as of this morning, October 5.
The Dow added around 0.49 percent to 51,176.96 and the S&P 500 rose about 0.73 percent to 7,722.72, while the Nasdaq led with a gain of roughly 1.19 percent to 27,190.86 as investors leaned into chip and AI names.
The VIX still climbed around 5.10 percent to 16.09, a sign of lingering hedging even as equities firmed.
Gold and silver both pushed higher, up around 0.64 and 2.94 percent, while crude slipped about 1.11 percent to around $90.10 a barrel.
Intel slipped around 0.56 percent to about $119.33 as the TSMC-Terafab headlines overshadowed its recent rally.
Nvidia firmed roughly 1.34 percent on continued AI infrastructure demand, and Taiwan Semiconductor climbed about 2.96 percent ahead of its October 15 earnings report.
Main Story
Intel shares came under pressure after a report that Taiwan Semiconductor is weighing a role at Terafab, the chip facility Elon Musk is building in Texas.
- Intel joined Terafab in April with its next-generation 14A process named as the site’s sole technology, and the stock had rallied sharply on that foundry win before Friday’s pullback to around $119.33.
- The mainstream read is that TSMC’s entry would dilute Intel’s position at Terafab, and Susquehanna estimates Intel’s CPU model share already slipped to around 68.1 percent last quarter as AMD gained ground.
- What the market may be missing is that Musk only confirmed talks are ongoing, not a deal, leaving plenty of room for the headline risk to fade as quickly as it arrived.
Chart of the Day
Intel rallied from around $96 to a fresh high near $126 over the past month on optimism about its Texas foundry role before Friday’s headlines knocked it back to around $119.33.
The stock is now sitting almost exactly on its 50-day moving average near $120.47, a level that has acted as a springboard on past pullbacks this year.
Whether that line holds likely depends on how concrete the TSMC talk turns out to be in the coming days.
Technical Trading
A few levels drawn from investing.com-sourced technical analysis on Intel.
- Price is straddling the 50-day moving average around $120.47, with the 200-day moving average far below near $104.90, underscoring the longer-term uptrend.
- RSI(14) sits at 46.75, a neutral reading that shows little momentum in either direction after the pullback.
- MACD remains marginally positive at 0.12, while the daily pivot point sits at $119.93 with support at $119.56 and resistance at $120.18.
Global News
- The ISM Services PMI for September releases today at 10 a.m. Eastern, with consensus calling for 55.0 versus August’s 55.4.
- September payrolls rose just 29,000 against a forecast of 90,000, and unemployment ticked up to 4.2 percent, even as the 10-year Treasury yield held near 5.3 percent.
- OPEC+ held November production quotas unchanged, with the ongoing US-Iran conflict keeping Gulf output roughly 5 million barrels a day below prewar levels.
- China shut around 670 banks in 2025, about a quarter of the country’s small rural lenders, as Beijing consolidates its financial system amid a deepening economic slowdown.
Texas News
Elon Musk’s Terafab chip project, under development in Grimes County, Texas, sat at the center of today’s Intel selloff after reports that TSMC is in talks to join the venture.
Intel’s 14A process had been named the facility’s sole process technology when it joined the project in April.
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Looking Ahead
Wednesday, October 7: Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s September meeting post, the clearest read yet on how policymakers are weighing a cooling labor market against yields near multidecade highs.
Thursday, October 15: Taiwan Semiconductor reports third-quarter earnings, an early test of whether AI-driven chip demand can offset the uncertainty from this month’s Terafab headlines.
Thursday, October 22: Intel reports earnings, a test of whether its foundry turnaround story can withstand the doubt introduced by TSMC’s reported interest in Terafab.
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Prices from Yahoo Finance, CNBC and Fortune. Technical levels from Investing.com and FXStreet. News from Reuters, Al Jazeera and CNBC.
For informational purposes only. Not investment advice. Prices are indicative opening levels and may differ from your broker.
