Intel earnings: A darker shade of green?

Wall Street went nuts for Intel's strong earnings report after the company blew out expected numbers. Shares of Intel (INTC) rose from the $16 on July 8 to over $18 in the wake of the report.

But a closer read of the numbers shows that Intel, and by extension the global tech economy, is not out of the woods yet. Almost all of the improvement came from sales in Asia, where the Chinese stimulus package played an outsize role. The European Union appeared particularly weak and the U.S. had yet to recover. Most important, revenues for corporate sales of PCs and servers did not show any real signs of recovery. Traditionally, the tech sector cannot bounce until big companies start buying.