Nvidia shares retake AI leadership role. Wall Street is bullish going forward

CNBC

8 hours ago

Wall Street investors believe that Nvidia 's next rally to even higher highs is only a matter of time. The chipmaker ended last week by hitting fresh all-time highs three days in a row. But this bullish showing stands in contrast to the doubt that has hovered around the stock for much of the year. NVDA YTD mountain NVDA YTD chart Nvidia — alongside the other major semiconductor names — had a rough start to 2025, as fears around China export controls weighed heavily on sentiment. For most of the past year, shares have traded within a flat range without any kind of solid move higher. "The sentiment had definitely turned on AI semis in general, and Nvidia is kind of that poster boy child as far as the AI semi trade is concerned," said CFRA analyst Angelo Zino in an interview with CNBC. "Sometimes with these big megacap tech stocks and names that have had incredible runs, you do have to digest those gains." Another reason for Nvidia's recent lag may be that the stock has been a victim of its own success, said Gene Munster, co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management. He added that investors have been concerned that Nvidia's "remarkable growth story" over the past few years wasn't sustainable in the long term. "Despite all the good things that are going on with AI, it's still hard for Nvidia investors to sleep well at night," he told CNBC. But Nvidia's performance took a turn last week. On Wednesday, investors sent the stock up 4% to a new all-time closing record. Friday's session saw a gain of nearly 2% — marking the stock's fifth consecutive positive session. Nvidia's chart pattern also lends credence to claims that the stock could continue to rally from here. Nvidia recently formed what's known as a golden cross — when its 50-day moving average crosses above its 200-day moving average — implying that a long-term bull market may be emerging. Jordan Klein, an analyst at Mizuho, attributed Nvidia's rally last week to investors closing the gap between the stock and its competitors. Going forward, he expects another substantial spike when Nvidia releases its next earnings report, around the end of August. Increasing demand trends and the rollout of Nvidia's new Blackwell chip both point to higher revisions from the company. "In late August they'll guide their October revenue, which I think could be notably higher than expected," Klein told CNBC. "It's driven by Blackwell volumes ramping and those really start to scale up in July, and then more in August, probably into September." Zino added that while a lot of the hype around Blackwell's launch is already likely priced into the stock, there's still more room for shares to go higher. "You're at a point in time for Nvidia where now they're going to scale up Blackwell, and now they're going to get some of that margin expansion and some of those benefits here over the next couple of quarters," he said. "And I think that's a big reason why the stock is working as well." Like Klein and Zino, Munster is also bullish on Nvidia's forward trajectory. He said Nvidia's valuation still looks compelling, even at these new all-time highs. "It's probably the most attractive large-cap tech company on a price-to-growth basis," he said. While some investors have pointed to hyperscalers building their own custom chips as a potential headwind for Nvidia, Munster said this is an unlikely theme due to the cost of building chips in house. Munster said he remains confident about Nvidia's outlook since he believes the industry is still early in its buildout of AI. As evidence, he pointed to the multimillion dollar bonuses Meta has offered to poach OpenAI employees as the Facebook owner tries to supercharge its development efforts.