Nvidia Just Had Its Worst 5 Days Since 2022, Worse Than the DeepSeek Crash
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) trades at $177.22, and Wall Street’s average price target is $325.78. At that price, the target means 83.83% upside.
Most of that gap opened over five sessions. By our calculation, the stock fell 18.29% from a $206.69 close. Based on Tuesday’s $4.08 trillion market value and 24.15 billion shares, we estimate about $913 billion of value was erased.
Tuesday’s $168.89 close was the stock’s lowest since a $165.17 finish in late March. A gap this wide usually signals that analysts and the market disagree about something basic. Here, the disagreement is over governance and China exposure, even as NVIDIA says demand for its chips still outpaces supply.
Earnings come out November 17 after the close. That report will be the first hard test of whether the targets or the stock price is closer to right.
How Five Days Beat DeepSeek and Most of 2022
This was NVIDIA’s worst five-session stretch since the one that ended September 1, 2022. In that stretch, the split-adjusted stock fell 22.2%, from $17.91 to $13.94. A window that ended in April 2022 was also worse, with a 19.89% drop, so “since 2022” means since that September.
The DeepSeek comparison sets five days against five days. NVIDIA lost 16.97% in a single January 2025 session, falling from $142.62 to $118.42. Its worst five sessions around that shock cost 15.89%.
This week’s slide was also bigger than the 17.22% drop over the five sessions that ended in September 2024. No single day came close to the DeepSeek session. The worst was a 9.26% fall to $181.60.
The lone up day, a 2.78% bounce to $186.64, did not hold; other sessions fell 3.17% to $200.13 and 4.27% to $178.67. On Tuesday, it lost $9.78, or 5.47%, on 429.2 million shares, trading as low as $165.89.
Governance, China and Hot Inflation Landed Together
NVIDIA’s independent directors hired Joon H. Kim, a former acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. They will investigate reports that CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The board says it has no reason to believe national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.
A separate report detailed the hardware transfers. At least $7.5 billion of NVIDIA hardware has reached Chinese companies since 2023 through a network linked to businesswoman Alice Huang, who is not related to the CEO. The stock also faced a broader tech sell-off and an inflation report that came in above forecasts. October consumer prices rose 0.4%, and core prices rose 0.3%, which hurts high-multiple stocks most.
The 2022 slide also had a China trigger. NVIDIA announced new export license rules. The rules for its A100 and H100 chips, it said, could cost about $400 million in China sales that quarter. That recovery had to wait for the chip cycle to turn, and the DeepSeek drop reversed once buyers decided cheaper, more efficient AI would increase demand for chips.
Most Analysts Are Keeping Their Buy Ratings
Of 62 analysts, 10 rate NVIDIA Strong Buy, 49 Buy, two Hold, and one Sell. Measured from Tuesday’s close, the consensus target means 92.89% upside. Price targets are estimates, though, and they often lag fast-moving news.
Baird downgraded the stock to Neutral from Outperform and cut its target to $200 from $500. It cited uncertainty over Huang’s tenure and the chance that large cloud companies spend less on AI in 2027. Analyst Tristan Gerra estimated that a possible new H200 export ban to China could mean a $5 billion write-down.
Morgan Stanley removed NVIDIA as a Top Pick. It kept its Overweight rating and $300 target, and Bank of America dropped it from its top-ideas list. Business results remain strong: revenue rose 105.8% last quarter to $96.22 billion, and the stock trades at about 11 times forward earnings.
Rival Chip Stocks Held Up While NVIDIA Fell
NVIDIA’s decline was specific to the company. Over the same five sessions, Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) gained 6.47%, and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) slipped 0.05%.
AMD trades at $565.39 against a $657.49 target, or 16.29% upside. Broadcom trades at $353.01 against a $533.42 target, or 51.11% upside. NVIDIA has the largest gap in the group and is down 4.75% this year, while the S&P 500 is up 9.97%.
On Wednesday, NVIDIA opened at $172.80 and was up 4.93% by early afternoon, for a market value of about $4.28 trillion. By our calculation, a rolling five-day count that ends Wednesday shows a smaller decline of about 11.4%.
What Could Move NVIDIA Stock After Earnings
NVIDIA’s outlook improves if the earnings report shows data center demand still ahead of supply, guidance holding up, and a board update that narrows the investigation. But the case weakens if the investigation puts Huang’s job in question or Washington imposes an H200 ban that turns the China report into an enforcement case.
Losing a founder-CEO could hold down the stock’s valuation for several quarters. Still, a $5 billion write-down would be small compared with one quarter’s $96.22 billion in revenue.
NVIDIA’s valuation looks reasonable at this price. At about 11 times forward earnings, the stock already prices in a governance failure that no one has shown. Broadcom, by comparison, held about flat through the selloff, and its consensus target means 51.11% upside.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
