NVIDIA Splits 10-to-1; Non-farm Payrolls on Deck for Friday

Thursday, June 6th, 2024

Market indices took a breather today. Only the Dow closed in the green on a tepid trading day overall, +0.20%, while the S&P 500 finished -0.02%, the Nasdaq down -0.09% and the small-cap Russell 2000 bringing up the rear at -0.70%. Over the last week of trading, only the Russell is in the red. Same goes for the one-month chart, now that the Dow has put together a decent +2% gain from a week ago. None of the indices are at all-time highs, but the Nasdaq and S&P are closing in once again.

This all takes a back seat to the NVIDIA NVDA story this afternoon. Two weeks ago, when the chipmaker and A.I. leader reported another quarter of stellar earnings, the company announced a 10 for 1 stock split, which has taken place as of today’s close. This brings one share of NVIDIA down to roughly $121 per share, a place it hasn’t been since October 13, 2022. Which is in itself rather insane — the company shares have already increased ten-fold in 20 months.

This is how you get to be the second-largest company in the world by market cap. NVIDIA sits behind only Microsoft MSFT, surpassing Apple AAPL just yesterday, to $3 trillion in market value — by going on a valuation run not even seen when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 17 years ago. I mean, if this chart were a mountain you couldn’t even climb it: NVIDIA was trading under $200 per share in January of 2023 and less than $500 in January 2024. Since then, leading the A.I. bull run, it has risen to $1210 per share.

Also, no one suggests this success is unearned. While NVIDIA’s Q1 numbers a couple weeks back displayed a gaudy +560% earnings growth and +260% in revenues (+427% in its Data Center space by itself), the Zacks consensus currently expects +133% growth in earnings for the ongoing quarter and +109% in revenues. As such, this mega-success still carries a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), with no fewer than 10 earnings estimate upgrades having been made in the last 30 days alone.

So the $121 price will now get even more takers, presumably. Even casual investors now know NVIDIA’s name and what it does, so those lucky enough to have bought NVIDIA back when it had yet to reach its full potential will be sitting even prettier when all those replicated shares start earning on their own, as well. It’s a good day to be Jensen Huang. It’s a good day to be at all affiliated with this massive powerhouse of a stock.

Tomorrow morning, the nonfarm payrolls and Unemployment Rate come out. The Employment Situation report, from the segment of the federal government called the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is expected to bring 190K jobs to the American economy for the month of May, improving on the previous month’s reported 175K. Both the Unemployment Rate and year-over-year Hourly Wages are expected to come in at +3.9%, same as the previous month. Can the market take any more good news?

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