Nvidia had a rocky start to the year. That has done little to dull its popularity among individual investors, many of whom are positioning for the shares to rally after Wednesday’s earnings report.
The graphics-chip maker lost nearly $600 billion in market value in a single session in late January when news of a lower-cost artificial-intelligence model from Chinese company DeepSeek temporarily rattled investors’ confidence in the AI trade.
The shares have since recovered much of those declines. The stock, which has soared nearly 800% since the end of 2022, is down just 3% in 2025 and 8.7% from Jan. 24, before the DeepSeek threat emerged .
The competitive worries have done little to shake individual investors’ faith in the stock. In fact, they have poured more than $5.7 billion into Nvidia shares this year through Friday, more than double the net flows over the same period last year, according to Vanda Research data. That includes $562 million the day of the DeepSeek selloff, the highest one-day sum on record dating back to 2014.
On the investing platform Interactive Brokers, Nvidia is one of the top two traded tickers of 2025, with nearly 554,000 net buy orders placed for the stock through Feb. 18, according to data from the brokerage. That includes more than 200,000 orders from the week of the tech rout.
“Nvidia continues to be the golden child of the AI revolution,” said Dan Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities and one of Wall Street’s biggest AI bulls. “Nothing’s changing that, including DeepSeek.”
Investors are scooping up Nvidia options contracts that would pay out if shares jump this week after the company’s earnings report. In recent days, some of the most actively traded Nvidia options have been calls tied to the stock climbing to $145 and $160, Cboe Global Markets data show. Call options offer the right to buy a stock at a set price. The shares closed Monday at $130.28; their all-time high from Jan. 6 was $149.43.
According to FactSet, Nvidia is expected to report a 59% jump in earnings and a 72% rise in revenue from a year earlier when it reports quarterly results after markets close on Wednesday.
Traders are wagering that Nvidia’s stock will swing sharply after its report, as it has in prior quarters. They are betting on a roughly 9% move, up or down, in the shares during the session after the report, according to data from Options Research & Technology Services. The chip maker’s stock has moved roughly 8% on average after its past 12 earnings reports.
For many investors, a bet on Nvidia has become inseparable from a bet on the future of AI.
That is the case for Max Schechner, a 76-year-old attorney who owns Nvidia stock in addition to shares in a number of companies he considers tangential plays, such as cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks and cloud software company ServiceNow.
Schechner said he first bought shares of Nvidia in 2019 when they were trading at just $4.82. His holdings currently comprise about 10% of his stock-picking portfolio, he said.
“I’m like that monkey with the hand in the jar. I just can’t let go,” said Schechner, who held on to his shares through the DeepSeek scare. A reason to sell Nvidia, he said, would be reason enough to sell off every other AI stock he owns.
Over the past two years, investor optimism about the profit-making potential of AI helped send a select group of tech stocks to new heights. But the Magnificent Seven have, so far, faltered in 2025: The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF that tracks the group of stocks is down about 3%. The S&P 500 is up 1.7%.
Many investors are writing off the recent drop in Nvidia’s share price as a temporary blip. Mike Smith, a management consultant in Jersey City, N.J., said January’s AI jitters didn’t sway him to shrink his position.
“To me, that was just a flash in the pan,” said Smith, 34 years old. He has no plans to sell any Nvidia stock anytime soon. “It’s really hard to think of any scenario where Nvidia is less important in 10 years.”
Write to Hannah Erin Lang at [email protected]