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Nvidia results could spur record $300 billion swing in shares, options show

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August 27, 2024

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Traders in the U.S. equity options market are expecting Nvidia’s (NVDA) upcoming earnings report to spark a more than $300 billion swing in the shares of the world’s most dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker.

Nvidia results could spur record $300 billion swing in shares, options show

Options pricing shows that traders anticipate a move of around 9.8% in the company’s shares on Thursday, a day after it reports earnings, data from analytics firm ORATS showed. That’s larger than the expected move ahead of any Nvidia report over the last three years and well above the stock’s average post-earnings move of 8.1% over that same period, according to ORATS.

NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)
NasdaqGS – Nasdaq Real Time Price (USD)

128.30

+1.84(1.46%)
At close:4:00PM EDT
127.70-0.60 (-0.47%)
After hours: 7:59PM EDT

Given Nvidia’s market capitalization of about $3.11 trillion, a 9.8% swing in the shares would translate to about $305 billion, likely the largest expected earnings move for any company in history, analysts said.

Such a move would dwarf the market capitalization of 95% of S&P 500 constituents, including Netflix and Merck, according to LSEG data.

The results from Nvidia, whose chips are widely seen as the gold standard in artificial intelligence, also have big implications for the broader market. The stock is up some 150% year-to-date, accounting for around a quarter of the S&P 500’s 18% year-to-date gain.

“It alone has been a huge contributor to the overall profitability of the S&P 500,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “It’s the Atlas holding up the market.”

Options pricing suggests traders are more concerned about missing out on a large upside move from Nvidia than getting hurt by a large drop.

Traders are assigning a 7% chance the stock rises more than 20% by Friday, while only a giving a 4% probability to a more than 20% sell-off, according to a Susquehanna Financial analysis of options data.

“(Ahead of earnings) people typically want to buy hedges, they want to buy insurance, but in Nvidia’s case, a lot of that insurance is FOMO insurance,” Sosnick said, referring to the popular acronym for “fear of missing out.”

“They don’t want to miss a rally.”

Part of the reason options traders are pricing this large a move for Nvidia has to do with how volatile the company’s shares have been in the past.

Short History

  • NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Initially focused on graphics processing units (GPUs), the company released its first product, the NV1, in 1995.

  • In 1999, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 256, considered the first GPU, revolutionizing computer graphics for gaming and professional visualization.

  • Over the years, NVIDIA expanded its product line to include GPUs for data centers, AI, and machine learning. The company’s CUDA platform, launched in 2006, enabled parallel computing on GPUs, boosting its role in scientific research, AI, and deep learning. NVIDIA’s dominance in the GPU market grew, and it became a leader in AI hardware and software by the 2010s.

  • Today, NVIDIA is a major player in graphics, AI, data centers, and self-driving car technologies.

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