INTC: the stock that tested every kind of patience
The Market Wave Algorithm for Equities against Intel in three windows. Dollar cost averaging beaten in all three.
Intel: the chipmaker that spent eight years losing its lead, lost its dividend, took on the US government as a shareholder, and then tripled in a spring.
Why this case study, and why now
We have already shown what disciplined, rules-based execution does with a runaway winner, a brutal drawdown, a sideways index, and a stock that kept changing its story. Intel is a different problem. Intel made investors wait. It went sideways for years, round tripped for two more, and only paid the people who were still there when the run finally came.
That history leaves today's investor with three questions, and this study answers each one with its own window and its own recipe of the Market Wave Algorithm for Equities.
What happens in a market that goes nowhere for years?
Strategy+95.9%
- Buy and hold
- -15.7%
- DCA
- -8.2%
What did this year actually pay?
Strategy+117.9%
- DCA
- +44.9%
What if the market cools off again?
Strategy+159.1%
- Buy and hold
- -0.6%
- DCA
- +72.3%
Every run starts from the same hypothetical $100,000 in cash and zero shares.
Backtested results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
The subject
Intel designs and manufactures the processors inside most of the world's PCs and a large share of its servers, and it is the only American company still building leading edge chips on American soil. For most of the last decade that second fact was a liability. In 2026 it became the whole story.
The price history reads like three different stocks.
- June 2018Intel trades near $57, close to a then eighteen year high. Within weeks its CEO resigns and its 10 nanometer delays become public.
- July 2020Intel announces its 7 nanometer process is a year behind. The stock falls 16% in a day and never recovers the level.
- April 2021A new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, and a $20 billion Arizona fab plan lift the stock to a high near $68. It is the last high for five years.
- April 2022Intel trades near $48, below where it stood in June 2018. Four years, nothing to show for it.
- August 2, 2024Intel suspends its dividend, cuts 15,000 jobs, and falls 26% in a day, its worst session since 1974. By April 2025 the stock trades near $18.
- 2025SoftBank invests $2 billion, the US government takes a 10% stake, and Nvidia buys $5 billion of stock at $23.28. The stock finishes the year near $37, up 84%, and still below where it started 2024.
- 2026A supply shortfall knocks 17% off the stock on January 23. Then, from late March, the foundry turnaround lands: a reported Apple manufacturing deal, first quarter revenue $1.4 billion above guidance, and a record high of $142.35 in late June. A 30% slide through July follows. Intel trades near $90 today.
Here is the catch that matters for this study. Intel paid enormously, eventually. But the people it paid were the ones who sat through four flat years, a 26% day, a trip to $18, and a 17% day in January, without selling. Almost nobody did.
The investor's dilemma
Intel is a patience test, and patience is not a strategy. The stock sets up three failure modes that human investors handle badly.
The sideways grind
From 2018 to 2022, Intel went nowhere while the rest of the market doubled. Holders either gave up and sold into the 2020 low, or held a dead position for four years out of loyalty to a name. Neither choice produced a dollar.
The round trip ride
A buy and hold investor from January 2024 watched the stock lose 60% in a year, bottom near $18, and claw back to even by April 2026. Twenty seven months of holding, most of it deeply underwater, for a return of negative 0.6%. The account survived. The investor's conviction usually does not, and the ones who sold at $18 never got to see April.
The too high freeze
Intel doubled in April 2026 and doubled again by June. Every entry point looked like the top. Investors who waited for a comfortable price watched a $39 stock become a $142 stock, then finally bought in late June, a few sessions before a 30% slide.
Dollar cost averaging deserves honest credit here. It kept buying near $18 in 2025 when nobody else would, and it earned +72.3% through the round trip for it. But DCA has a structural cost: it buys blind, it never sells, and it never realizes a dollar of profit. Through four sideways years it lost money. In the 2026 run it bought all the way up and banked nothing at the top.
A rules-based algorithm restores what Intel takes away: a way to get paid while you wait.
The algorithm
Market Wave is the Arch Public algorithm for equities. It does three things, and it does them without asking how you feel about the news.
Ride confirmed moves
It enters when price action confirms a move, not when a headline promises one, and it keeps adding within its rules while the move holds.
Exit on rules, not nerves
It takes profit into strength at levels set in advance. Gains become cash because the system says so, not because the holder finally flinched.
Step aside in chop
When the wave flattens, it stops trading. No revenge trades, no averaging into a falling knife.
The same algorithm also adjusts to the question you ask it. Scope runs from 0.5, reading the market hour by hour, to 20, reading it in quarters. This study uses three recipes for three jobs: a 2.5 scope on weekly bars to harvest four sideways years, a 2 scope on daily bars with a downtrend exit to ride this year's run and step off when it broke, and a 2.5 scope on hourly bars with a wide exit threshold to work a two year round trip into cash. Same discipline, three different jobs.
A 2.5 scope on weekly bars to harvest four sideways years.
A 2 scope on daily bars with a downtrend exit to ride this year's run and step off when it broke.
A 2.5 scope on hourly bars with a wide exit threshold to work a two year round trip into cash.
Backtested results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
“The long sideways market”
June 1, 2018 to April 1, 2022 · Weekly chart · Scope 2.5
This window answers the question every long term holder dreads: what if the stock just sits there? Intel entered the window near $57, a level it would not see again for years. It sold off on the CEO resignation and the 10 nanometer delays, recovered into 2020, crashed 16% in a day on the 7 nanometer news, rallied to $68 on the Gelsinger plan in April 2021, and slid back to $48 by April 2022. Buy and hold finished at negative 15.7%. Dollar cost averaging, buying monthly for 46 months, finished at negative 8.2%. Four years of patience, and both benchmarks lost money.
The algorithm treated the range as a market. It bought the dips inside its rules, sold the rips, and built a position on the way.
+95.9%
- Buy and hold -15.7%, outperformance +111.6 percentage points
- DCA -8.2%, outperformance +104 percentage points
- Ending value
- $195,855
- Realized profit, banked in cash
- $100,289
- Unrealized loss on the open position at window end
- -$4,434
- Shares held
- 4,056 at $49.20 avg cost
- Cash
- $721
Backtested results. Weekly chart, window valued April 1, 2022. Position value today from public market data. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
“The run up”
January 1, 2026 to August 21, 2026 · Daily chart · Scope 2 with the downtrend exit
This is the 2026 scoreboard, the window everyone will remember. Intel opened the year near $39, lost 17% in a day on January 23, then ran from roughly $45 at the end of March to a $142.35 record in late June, more than tripling in a quarter. July took 30% of it back. Dollar cost averaging, buying monthly across the window, earned +44.9%, a strong year by any normal standard, with its later buys landing near the top.
The algorithm did not predict the run. It rode what the market confirmed, sold into strength by rule, and when the trend broke in July it sold on the break and started buying the decline in small steps.
+117.9%
- DCA +44.9%, outperformance +73.1 percentage points
- Ending value
- $217,928
- Realized profit, banked in cash
- $118,627
- Unrealized loss on the open position
- -$699
- Shares held
- 2,404 at $90.67 avg cost
- Cash
- $654
Backtested results. Daily chart, valued August 21, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
“The round trip”
January 1, 2024 to April 1, 2026 · Hourly chart · Scope 2.5 with a wide 9.4% exit threshold
Every investor in this year's winners carries the same quiet fear: what if the market cools off and the stock gives it all back? You do not have to imagine it. Intel already ran that experiment. This window contains the August 2024 dividend suspension and 26% day, the December 2024 CEO exit, the April 2025 low near $18, the SoftBank, government, and Nvidia lifelines, an 84% year in 2025, and the 17% drop in January 2026. A buy and holder who entered near $50 spent two years underwater and finished at negative 0.6%. Twenty seven months for nothing. Dollar cost averaging earned +72.3%, its blind monthly buys through the 2025 low doing exactly what DCA does well.
The algorithm beat them both, and it banked cash on the way down and back.
+159.1%
- Buy and hold -0.6%, outperformance +159.7 percentage points
- DCA +72.3%, outperformance +86.8 percentage points
- Ending value
- $259,059
- Realized profit, banked in cash
- $108,169
- Unrealized profit on open shares
- $50,890
- Shares held
- 4,222 at $35.96 avg cost
- Cash
- $56,360
Backtested results. Hourly chart, window valued April 1, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
Side by side
| The long sideways market | The run up | The round trip | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Window | Jun 1, 2018 to Apr 1, 2022 | Jan 1 to Aug 21, 2026 | Jan 1, 2024 to Apr 1, 2026 |
| Chart and scope | Weekly, 2.5 | Daily, 2 | Hourly, 2.5 |
| Strategy return | +95.9% | +117.9% | +159.1% |
| DCA return | -8.2% | +44.9% | +72.3% |
| Edge vs DCA | +104 pts | +73.1 pts | +86.8 pts |
| Ending value | $195,855 | $217,928 | $259,059 |
| Realized profit | $100,289 | $118,627 | $108,169 |
| Shares held at end | 4,056 | 2,404 | 4,222 |
| Average cost basis | $49.20 | $90.67 | $35.96 |
| Cash at end | $721 | $654 | $56,360 |
All figures from a hypothetical $100,000 starting in cash. Each window valued at its own end date.
Backtested results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
Why the results differ
The three scenarios are not three strategies. They are one algorithm answering the three questions investors actually ask.
Ask it what happens when a stock goes nowhere for years
Answer: the weekly recipe answers: +95.9% harvested from a range that lost money for both benchmarks, plus 4,056 shares at a $49.20 basis handed to the next bull market.
Ask it what this year was worth
Answer: the daily recipe answers: +117.9%, with the whole gain realized before July took 30% off the stock.
Ask it what happens if the market cools off again
Answer: the hourly recipe answers: +159.1% through a round trip that returned a buy and holder to zero, plus 4,222 shares at a $35.96 basis bought near the bottom of it.
The benchmarks could not adapt because they only ever make one decision. Buy and hold decides once and waits. DCA decides once and repeats. Both were at the mercy of which chapter of the Intel story their one decision happened to land in, and for eight years most chapters were bad. The algorithm made hundreds of small decisions, every one of them by rule, and none of them required knowing when the turnaround would finally arrive.
The edge is not prediction. The edge is never needing to be right about the timing.
Backtested results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
The real lesson
Intel is the vehicle. The lesson travels.
- 01
A sideways market is not dead money if you have rules
Four years of Intel going nowhere paid +95.9% to an account that bought weakness and sold strength by rule, and built a 4,056 share position for the run that came later.
- 02
The cool off you fear is a scenario the rules have already rehearsed
If this year's winners give it back, the round trip shows the plan: buy the collapse in steps, bank the bounces, and hold the recovery on a wide threshold so the next run starts from a low basis.
- 03
Banked profit is the only profit that survives the next chapter
Realized cash, $100,289 in the range, $118,627 in the run, $108,169 in the round trip, does not care what Intel does next. The question is not whether the algorithm works. The question is which job you want it doing in your account.
Backtested results. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational purposes only.
A path forward
Your capital never leaves your account. The algorithm trades under rules you set, in a brokerage account you own, with zero custody handed to anyone. You keep full control and full transparency. What changes is the decision making: rules, not reactions.
Eight years of Intel asked investors to wait, then wait longer, then buy at the top. The algorithm never waited for anything. It harvested four flat years for +95.9%, turned a round trip to nowhere into +159.1% and a $35.96 basis, and rode the year of the run to +117.9% with the profit banked before the slide. The buy and holder needed the turnaround to arrive on schedule. The algorithm got paid while everyone else was still waiting.
Every stock has a waiting period. What is your plan for getting paid during it?
Buy and hold, the round trip
-0.6%
The Market Wave Algorithm for Equities, the round trip
+159.1%
$108,169 banked as realized profit
Look at the realized profit row first. In three different markets, a four year range, a one year run, and a two year round trip, the algorithm converted movement into banked cash, and in every window the realized profit alone exceeded the starting account. Then look at the basis row. The two windows where Intel went nowhere left the account holding thousands of shares at $49.20 and $35.96, bought by rule while everyone else was waiting. The benchmarks needed Intel to go up. The algorithm needed Intel to move.