Technical Note

In today's rap, Bill Fleckenstein commented that Intel had beaten the number this quarter, but implied in part it was an accounting game where they used an inventory build to manage earnings.  What that literally means (or so I would suppose) is that Intel is a LIFO firm with a high variable component in its production stage.  In other words, the cost of inventory is lower now, versus the cost of inventory from last week, so they can match new inventory with sales to minimize COGS and therefore raise earnings.