Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) climbed roughly 18% in pre-market trading on May 6 after a Q1 beat, while Intel (INTC) extended a multi-week run with a 13% gain to a fresh all-time high near $108.
Both stocks have carried 14-day RSI readings well above 70 for most of April, yet each fresh overbought print has been met with another leg higher rather than the pullback the technical setup typically demands.
Overbought Signals Lose Their Bite for AMD and INTC
AMD closed yesterday up 87% from early April, with daily RSI sitting at 72.54 even after a brief mid-week dip. Intel’s RSI is more extreme at 84.53, having stayed above 70 since mid-April.
Standard chart logic treats both readings as exhaustion zones. Yet AMD has rallied roughly 25% since first crossing into overbought territory, and Intel has added more than 60% over the same window.
The pattern resembles late-stage trend extensions where momentum funds keep pressing winners across semiconductors and adjacent AI plays.
Pullbacks have stayed shallow, with buyers stepping in at moving averages instead of waiting for full RSI resets.
Earnings Keep Validating the Bid
AMD’s Q1 revenue of $10.25 billion topped estimates by roughly $360 million, with data center sales up 57% year-over-year on demand for Instinct accelerators and EPYC processors. Q2 guidance with a midpoint near $11.2 billion sits above the $10.52 billion consensus.
Intel’s late-April report posted $13.6 billion in revenue against a $12.36 billion consensus, sending shares up nearly 24% in a single session.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan noted a shifting CPU-to-GPU ratio inside data centers, echoing the AI-driven tape that lifted Nvidia past $5 trillion last month.
HSBC trimmed AMD to Hold on May 4 after the 77% April surge, signaling Wall Street is starting to question the runway.
“In 13 months Lip Bu Tan Took intel from a possible and unthinkable bailout candidate to one of the wealthiest companies in the chip industry. There is a big 3 of CPUs, AMD, Intel and ARM… and the agents need far more CPUs than these three can produce,” Jim Cramer indicated.
Whether earnings momentum keeps absorbing those warnings, or capital begins rotating into other AI names, will shape the next several sessions.
