Retail Traders Rush to Buy AI Darling NVIDIA as Stock Price Drops Recently

Retail traders are viewing the recent sell-off of Nvidia as a buying opportunity, and have been snapping up shares of the dominant AI chip maker amid the volatility. Data from JPMorgan shows that this group of people purchased $1.8 billion worth of stock in the past week as Nvidia, led by Jensen Huang, experienced a rapid pullback. This nearly accounted for all of the $2.1 billion that retail traders spent on individual securities last week. Nvidia’s sell-off began last Thursday, when the company temporarily surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable publicly traded company in the US. In just three days, Nvidia’s stock price plummeted by 13%. The stock has since recovered some of its losses, with a modest 2% decline so far this week. Nvidia produces valuable AI graphics processing units (GPUs), which are being sold to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and Meta for their data centers and cloud services. Despite the recent downturn, Nvidia has more than doubled in value since 2024, rising 150% on top of last year’s 239% increase. The chipmaker’s valuation has now exceeded $3 trillion, becoming such a prominent player that it now serves as a market barometer that can influence the entire stock market. JPMorgan estimates that retail investors have seen a 179% increase in trading Nvidia this year, outperforming the stock’s performance so far. Meanwhile, JPMorgan notes that other large tech stocks performed poorly among individual investors last week, with net sales of $163 million for Advanced Micro Devices, $158 million for Microsoft, and $122 million for Tesla.