TLDR
- Nvidia closed Thursday at $181.60, down 9.26%, and was up about 4% premarket Friday.
- The stock is about 24% below its Oct. 6 record close and under its 200-day average.
- Democrats won both chambers of Congress, and data center power costs are now a political target.
- The PHLX Semiconductor Index had its worst day since March 2020.
- Nvidia reports quarterly results on Nov. 17.
Nvidia (NVDA) stock closed Thursday at $181.60, down 9.26%. That was its worst day since the DeepSeek sell-off in January 2025.
The drop took nearly $450 billion off its market value in one session. The company is now worth about $4.4 trillion.
Premarket Friday, the stock was up about 4% at $188.79. That is a small bounce after a rough stretch.
The stock has fallen five weeks in a row, including about 11% this week. It is down about 24% from its Oct. 6 record close, which erased nearly $1.4 trillion.
It now trades below its 200-day moving average of $204.48. The 50-day average is $220.63, and the 52-week range runs from $164.27 to $243.37.
What Set Off the Sell-Off
Democrats won both chambers of Congress this week. Candidates in both parties also ran against AI data centers, which run on Nvidia’s chips.
This fall, the Senate nearly passed a bill that would make data centers pay more of the power costs they create.
“There will be congressional hearings,” Stifel’s Brian Gardner told Reuters. “There will be investigations.”
UBS says construction pauses could delay a big part of the U.S. data center capacity planned for 2028. That is a key source of chip demand.
China added to the noise. House Republican leaders asked for a closed-door briefing with CEO Jensen Huang after a report about an executive’s alleged links to Chinese intelligence.
Chinese AI firm Moonshot has also explored reaching Blackwell chips through European data centers. Investors are also rethinking AI valuations and how infrastructure spending is financed.
Chip stocks fell together. Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor dropped more than 10%, Sandisk fell 22%, and AMD, Micron and Arm posted steep double-digit losses.
The PHLX Semiconductor Index had its worst day since March 2020. It is now more than a third below its June record.
The Numbers Behind the Slide
At $181.60, Nvidia trades at about 23 times earnings and has a beta of 2.21. Its market value stands at $4.38 trillion.
Last quarter, it earned $2.22 per share on $96.22 billion in revenue. Analysts expected $2.09 and $92.27 billion, and sales rose 105.9% from a year earlier.
Nvidia approved a $150 billion buyback on Sept. 28 and paid a $0.25 quarterly dividend on Oct. 1. Insiders sold about $399.5 million of stock over the past 90 days, including a $144 million sale by director Mark Stevens at $231.62.
Streaks like this are rare. Since the 1999 IPO, Nvidia has had five or more down weeks 12 times before this one, and it was higher 13 weeks later in only five of them.
Analysts remain positive. MarketBeat counts five Strong Buy, 48 Buy and one Hold rating, with an average target of $318.85.
Ark Invest reportedly bought Nvidia while selling AMD. Box also expanded its partnership with Nvidia to use Nemotron in AI search tools.
Nvidia reports quarterly results on Nov. 17.
