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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Speaks At The Bipartisan Policy Center
Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
First among AI-quals

Nvidia’s trouncing the competition like it’s about to deliver monster earnings

Outsized gains for Nvidia versus a broad index of chip stocks raises questions about how the stock will react to next month’s earnings report.

Luke Kawa

Nvidia, the chip designer powering the AI boom, has rocketed to new all-time highs in October with a 17% gain. In the process, it’s pulling away from its peers in a big way — the kind of thing that usually happens when the company is about to deliver a blowout set of quarterly numbers, or just did.

As of about 2:15 p.m. ET this afternoon, Nvidia is up more than double digits over the past 10 sessions, far outpacing the VanEck Semiconductor ETF’s advance. Last week, that two-week outperformance got to as much as 12.1%. That’s nearly the biggest gap between Nvidia and the semi crowd outside of the immediate run-up to or aftermath of an earnings release. The more positive outlier was the start of this year, when torrents of fresh money flowed into the AI bellwether.  

The thing is… Nvidia’s earnings report isn’t just around the corner. It’s a month away (11/21).

A couple non-exhaustive, non-mutually exclusive theories on what’s going on here:

  1. ASML’s latest quarterly report touched on some softness in chip demand ex-AI. The AI trade could be back to more of a winner-take-all mode, with Nvidia (rightfully) at its epicenter. A point in favor of this: every other time Nvidia’s gained at least 10% in a month since May 2023, the broader semiconductor group has done at least twice as well as it has this month. Earnings reports from the so-called hyperscalers (megacap tech firms investing heavily in AI) come well before Nvidia’s, which will allow for some more proof points for this thesis to be confirmed or rejected.

  2. The bump Nvidia has gotten in the past from posting good earnings is getting pulled forward, and that’s raising the bar for how good the numbers actually have to be next to keep those gains going when the report actually lands. Some backing for this: out of the last six earnings reports, the two in which Nvidia did the best compared to semis heading into the announcement (8/23/2023 and 8/23/2024) saw a pretty lackluster relative performance thereafter.

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Nvidia poised to invest $20 billion in OpenAI, per report

Nvidia is close to investing $20 billion in OpenAI’s funding round, per Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.

That would make its OpenAI stake more than the market value of chip designer’s entire portfolio of publicly traded stocks (a little over $15 billion, assuming no changes since their most recent filings).

Media reports have suggested that Amazon and SoftBank would be contributing even more to this oft-discussed funding round, in which the Sam Altman-led venture is aiming to raise $100 billion.

It’s a fairly happy ending after the two sides traded barbs in the press over the past few days, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had privately questioned the “lack of discipline” in the ChatGPT maker’s business approach, while sources told Reuters that OpenAI was “unsatisfied” by the performance of Nvidia’s AI chips and seeking alternatives.

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Chipotle beats Q4 estimates, but sinks on underwhelming full-year guidance

Chipotle reported earnings results that beat Wall Street estimates, but gave underwhelming full-year guidance.

For the last three months of 2025, Chipotle reported:

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.25, compared to the $0.24 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

  • Revenue of $3 billion, a bit higher than the $2.9 billion the Street was penciling in.

  • A comparable-store sales decline of 2.5%, less than the 2.9% decline the Street was expecting.

For the full year in 2026, Chipotle expects:

  • Comparable-store sales to be flat, compared to the 1.7% growth analysts were expecting.

Chipotle has struggled to spark sales over the past year and has previously cited strained consumers as a major headwind. The company fell more than 9% in after-hours trading shortly after the report was released.

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Take-Two raises its net bookings outlook, reaffirms November release for “Grand Theft Auto 6”

“Grand Theft Auto” and “NBA 2K” maker Take-Two reported results for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday. Its shares climbed about 4% in after-hours trading.

The company posted net bookings, or the amount customers spent on its products, of $1.76 billion, up 28% from the same quarter last year. Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expected $1.58 billion. In November, Take-Two guided for Q3 net bookings of between $1.55 billion and $1.6 billion.

Take-Two hiked its full-year bookings outlook to between $6.65 billion and $6.7 billion, up from a range of $6.4 billion to $6.5 billion. The new outlook compares to Wall Street’s $6.47 billion estimate. The gaming giant trimmed its full-year net loss guidance to between $369 million and $338 million (prior guidance: between $414 million and $349 million).

In its last quarter, Take-Two pushed back the planned release date of “Grand Theft Auto 6” from May 2026 to November 19, 2026. The company reaffirmed that date in Tuesday’s report. The game’s last trailer came in May 2025.

Shares of Take-Two and other major gaming companies have been sinking since late last week as investors react to early showcases of Google’s Project Genie, which allows users to generate interactive, “playable” worlds with a text or image prompt. As of Tuesday’s close, Take-Two has shed nearly $6 billion in market cap since Project Genie was released.

Analysts have called the market reaction unjustified, saying that the tool doesn’t allow for meaningful interactivity or replay-ability. According to mBank analyst Piotr Poniatowski, Project Genie is — at the moment — essentially a “one-minute-long walking simulator generator.”

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