New York, February 26, 2026, 17:03 EST — After-hours
- Nvidia slipped 5.5% to finish at $184.89, pulling the Nasdaq down with it.
- Quarterly sales guidance landed at $78 billion, beating forecasts. Still, investors kept their attention on returns and whether spending will pay off.
- Eyes shift to Nvidia’s March GTC event, with traders searching for new hints on demand trends and the company’s roadmap.
Nvidia (NVDA) tumbled 5.5% to $184.89 on Thursday, dragging the Nasdaq down 1.18%. The Dow squeezed out a 0.03% gain to finish at 49,499.20, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.54% to 6,908.86. “It feels like an Nvidia hangover that’s specific to the AI space,” said Michael Green, chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management. Reuters
Nvidia’s moves matter. As the main AI bellwether and a giant in major U.S. indexes, the stock has a habit: when it stumbles, the rest of the chip sector usually follows.
The rout followed Nvidia’s latest results, which showed yet another quarter of hefty gains and an outlook for fiscal Q1 sales around $78 billion—give or take 2%—topping the $72.60 billion analysts had been looking for, per LSEG. CEO Jensen Huang described the shift as fundamental: “This new way of doing computing is not going to go back,” he said. Mahoney Asset Management’s Ken Mahoney wasn’t surprised, calling it “the usual for Nvidia,” and noting, “a lot was baked in to the cake so far.” Reuters
Still, investors are zeroing in on the question of payback. Hanging over the sector: will the huge outlays by cloud giants—hyperscalers, namely Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—actually yield enough ROI? That’s the key metric: what goes in, what comes out.
Noise around competition is rising. “Nvidia once again exceeded expectations but the competitive picture is also shifting,” eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said, highlighting how customers are branching out to rivals like AMD and cloud firms are putting money into custom chips. Nvidia shares broke below key technical signals—specifically the 50- and 100-day moving averages, both closely tracked by traders. The stock’s forward price-to-earnings ratio landed at roughly 24.5, per LSEG DataStream. Reuters
Nvidia isn’t standing still. CEO Jensen Huang is ramping up efforts in CPUs, those workhorse chips where Intel and AMD have held sway, as AI businesses shift their focus from just training models to actually rolling out autonomous software “agents.” “We love CPUs as well as GPUs,” Huang told analysts, hinting that more details are coming at Nvidia’s annual developer conference next month. Reuters
Outside of the data-center surge, supply remains a sticking point. CFO Colette Kress flagged a persistent global gaming-chip shortage, warning on the earnings call, “for a couple quarters it is going to be very tight.” Kress said it’s still too soon to predict what things will look like by year-end. Reuters
The bear scenario isn’t complicated. Should the AI investment boom falter or cloud providers ramp up their move to proprietary chips, Nvidia’s growth could slow more quickly than shareholders might tolerate. Chip sector rivals typically feel the pain, too, as sympathy trades kick in.
A handful of short-term catalysts are on deck, first with Friday’s session carrying the momentum, then Nvidia’s GTC developer conference in San Jose from March 16 to 19 taking center stage. CEO Jensen Huang is slated to deliver his keynote March 16 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Market watchers are tuning in for details on Nvidia’s next chips, CPU roadmap, and any fresh signals about supply. NVIDIA
