Many of the leading semiconductor stocks continue to struggle to catch a bid higher. The important and highly followed Merrill Lynch Semiconductors HOLDRS ETF (NYSEARCA:SMH) is trading lower by 0.12 cents to $44.45 a share. Short term traders should watch for intra-day support around the $32.20 and $32.90 levels.

This morning, the Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSEARCA:SMH) is trading higher by 0.21 cents to $31.80 a share. The semiconductor sectors continue to struggle around the daily chart 200 moving average. This tells us that this important sector is showing weak relative strength when compared to the major stock market indexes.

AppleInsider reported this morning via DigiTimes that Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is in serious trouble.

ARM Holdings (NASDAQ: ARMH) is aggressively moving into the notebook industry, where Intel has long been the dominant player. With Windows 8 moving to ARM-based chips, the competition between ARM and Intel is going to heat up in 2013, as ARM's chips become more and powerful.

When Steve Jobs past away on Wednesday from pancreatic cancer, the world took a collective groan, and felt like it had lost one of the greatest men to live in the past fifty years, perhaps even longer than that.