THE REPORT that Intel would be spanked by the EU for its monopolistic behaviour boosted rival AMD stocks early on.

A subsequent denial that any decision had been reached sent the pendulum swinging back the other way.

EU spokesman Jonathan Todd told hacks that "no provisional or internal decision" had been reached on whether to levy the biggest fine in history against the chip maker - discounting Germany's WWI reparations bill, naturally. "The investigation is very much active and ongoing," he said.

Todd described the report in the Financial Times Deutschland as " irresponsible journalism", a fact Intel's spinners were keen to point out to us after they woke up and smelt the coffee this morning.

Is there any other sort, we wondered.

In the end, Intel stocks were down 34 cents, or 1.4 per cent, to $23.26. The news that upcoming mobile platform Centrino 2 would be delayed didn't help.

Having been up early, AMD ended up down ten cents, or 1.3 per cent, to $6.82, apparently hit by Todd's denial. It may be worth pointing out that Todd didn't deny that Intel would be spanked. He simply denied any decision had yet been reached. He obviously didn't talk to the same bloke the FTD spoke to, whoever (s)he was.

Nvidia was up 17 cents, or 0.7 per cent, to $23.53 after JMP Securities reckoned the outfit would outperform the market as a whole.

It never ceases to amaze us that the prognistications of some old duffer in a high-rise office somewhere influence what punters do with their wallets. Does the old duffer know something? Less than the FTD hack who wrote the Intel story we'll wager.

As one INQ reader wrote a while back: "I've noticed that each time you report on Nvidia the stock jumps. No doubt you've heard of the Colbert bump. Now there's the INQ bump."

Mind you, we didn't write about Nvidia today. Maybe someone got wind of what Charlie's got up his sleeve. µ