New York, May 24, 2026, 09:03 (EDT)
Nvidia shares slipped this week despite posting a fresh record quarter, and investors head into the holiday break asking how much of the upside is priced in. Shares finished Friday at $215.33, off 1.9% for the day and down around 4.4% from last week’s close, according to market data.
Weakness in Nvidia was clear Friday, even as U.S. stocks finished higher. The Dow closed at an all-time high and the S&P 500 notched its eighth weekly win. The chip stock fell but other semiconductors fared better. “Earnings season looked really good,” said James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management. But he said war headlines had acted as a speed bump for the market. Reuters
Markets in the U.S. stay shut Monday. The New York Stock Exchange puts Memorial Day, May 25, on its 2026 holiday list, so the next regular trading is set for Tuesday.
Nvidia’s fiscal first-quarter revenue increased 85% year over year to $81.6 billion. Data-center revenue climbed 92% to $75.2 billion. CEO Jensen Huang said the buildout of “AI factories” — data centers designed for training and running artificial intelligence — is “accelerating at extraordinary speed.” NVIDIA Newsroom
The company is guiding for second-quarter revenue of $91 billion, give or take 2%, beating the $86.84 billion analysts were looking for, according to LSEG. It also rolled out an $80 billion stock buyback. In a buyback, a company purchases its own stock, often to send cash back to shareholders and raise earnings per share.
Nvidia dropped 1.8% on Thursday after its forecast and buyback, with some investors selling to take profits, and others looking for stronger numbers. Reuters said some are worried about new competition from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index still ended 1.3% higher.
Nvidia’s numbers “help reinforce that robust AI-related spending trends remain intact,” said Brock Weimer, investment strategy analyst at Edward Jones. The story for bulls is direct: cloud firms are still making big bets, and Nvidia is still the main name in GPUs for training and running big AI models. Reuters
China was back in the market headlines over the weekend. In Taipei, Huang told reporters his $200 billion CPU market forecast counts China in, saying, “I would think so.” He called the idea of selling Nvidia’s H200 AI chip in China “terrific,” but so far there’s no Chinese approval and no H200 units have shipped, according to Reuters. Reuters
Nvidia’s income statement may matter less in the coming week, with attention shifting to rates, oil and valuations. The April personal consumption expenditures price index drops Thursday, giving the Fed its read on inflation. Investors are weighing if higher bond yields continue to hit pricey growth stocks. “Investors are moving beyond the earnings season,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise. Reuters
But there’s still a clear risk. If China stays closed off, if top cloud buyers cut back on data-center spending, or if higher yields keep dragging on expensive tech stocks, Nvidia could need more than another earnings beat to move the stock higher.
Options traders were looking for about a 4% swing in either direction next week from Nvidia’s close on Friday, based on contracts tied to preset buy or sell prices. This puts the stock either close to $224 or under $207, a tight range for Nvidia, which is still heavily linked to the AI trade.
