Nvidia settled Friday, August 21 at $214.72, its sixth consecutive lower close. The last green settle was Thursday, August 13 at $225.30, and the six sessions between those two prints took 4.70% off the stock. Every close below comes from the dated session history at stockanalysis.com, cross-checked line by line against Investing.com's own dated table, and the two agree to the cent.
That count stops at Friday, August 21, and it is a closed count. The next US cash session opened at 13:30 UTC on Monday, August 24 and sits outside it, so nothing on this page describes a run that is still extending. The question worth answering is what six small red closes into a scheduled binary event are actually worth, and the answer runs through a revenue figure the company published on May 20.
The Six Sessions, Close by Close
|
Date
|
Close
|
Session change
|
|
Thursday, August 13
|
$225.30
|
+0.54%
|
|
Friday, August 14
|
$225.16
|
-0.06%
|
|
Monday, August 17
|
$225.01
|
-0.07%
|
|
Tuesday, August 18
|
$219.74
|
-2.34%
|
|
Wednesday, August 19
|
$217.56
|
-0.99%
|
|
Thursday, August 20
|
$216.85
|
-0.33%
|
|
Friday, August 21
|
$214.72
|
-0.98%
|
A five-session version of this run is in circulation and it starts counting at the August 17 settle, which produces 4.57% instead of 4.70%. The August 14 close was down 0.06%, a move small enough to round away on a percentage screen and still a lower close than the session before it. Six is the number the dated table supports, and our standing NVDA stock profile carries the longer-run picture this run sits inside.
What matters more than the total is the shape of it. The worst single session took 2.34%, four of the six came in under 1%, and no session in the run reached the 5% mark that a genuine repricing normally announces itself with. Carrying the $5.20 trillion market capitalization that stockanalysis.com prints against the August 21 settle back across the run values the six sessions at roughly $256 billion, which is a derived figure rather than a reported one.
Nvidia Fell Every Session While Its Peers Fell Twice and Recovered
Splitting Nvidia from the semiconductor complex is where the run gets interesting, because the two did not move the same way.
|
Date
|
NVDA
|
AMD
|
MU
|
|
Tuesday, August 18
|
-2.34%
|
-4.27%
|
-7.02%
|
|
Wednesday, August 19
|
-0.99%
|
-3.71%
|
-0.39%
|
|
Thursday, August 20
|
-0.33%
|
+0.65%
|
+3.97%
|
|
Friday, August 21
|
-0.98%
|
+0.81%
|
-0.77%
|
August 18 was a sector session and Nvidia was the least damaged large name on the board. Oil pushed higher on renewed United States and Iran tension while bond yields stayed elevated, and the selling hit memory and merchant silicon considerably harder than it hit the AI accelerator franchise. Micron gave up 7.02% in that one session against Nvidia's 2.34%, and our Micron pre-earnings work covers why that name carries the sharpest beta inside the complex.
Then the paths separate. AMD closed green on both August 20 and August 21 while Micron gained 3.97% on the Thursday, and Nvidia closed lower on both. The Friday session is the cleanest tell of the six, because the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.43% to finish at 26,180.45 and Nvidia still settled down 0.98%.
So this was not a sector shock landing on Nvidia and staying there. AMD's data center momentum is a real competitive story, and it is not what produced this pattern either, because AMD outperformed on the back half of the run. Steady, small, one-directional selling ahead of a dated release is what position reduction looks like, and it tells you how the book is set rather than anything about the business.
The Guide, the Band and the Number the Street Wants
Nvidia's own second-quarter outlook is the anchor everything else gets measured against, and it sits in the first-quarter fiscal 2027 results release filed with the SEC on May 20.
|
Item
|
Company guidance
|
Street consensus
|
|
Revenue
|
$91.0 billion, plus or minus 2%
|
$91.9 billion
|
|
Non-GAAP gross margin
|
75.0%, plus or minus 50 bp
|
not estimated separately
|
|
Non-GAAP operating expenses
|
approximately $8.3 billion
|
not estimated separately
|
|
Non-GAAP EPS
|
not guided
|
$2.08
|
Work the band and the framing changes. Two percent either side of $91.0 billion runs from $89.18 billion to $92.82 billion, which puts the $91.9 billion consensus inside the range the company itself gave and about 0.9% above its midpoint. Investing.com's preview carries $91.9 billion and Rex Shares carries $91.85 billion, so the two published reads agree to within a rounding step.
Two details in the primary text get skipped in most previews. The outlook assumes no data center compute revenue from China whatsoever, which makes the guide a floor with an option attached rather than a central estimate. And the quarter it follows delivered $81.6 billion, up 20% sequentially and 85% year over year at a 75.0% non-GAAP gross margin, so the guided step to $91.0 billion is already an 11.5% sequential increase before anybody argues about a beat.
The October Quarter Is the Number That Decides the Session
Nvidia reports fiscal second-quarter results for the period ended July 26 after the US close on Wednesday, August 26, with written CFO commentary posted at approximately 20:20 UTC and the conference call at 2 p.m. Pacific, which is 21:00 UTC.
The quarter being reported is largely already known, because hyperscaler capital budgets were set months before it closed. What is not known is the October guide, and that is exactly where the published estimates scatter badly enough to be worth printing in full.
Investing.com puts third-quarter consensus at $103.96 billion with $2.37 in earnings per share. Rex Shares puts the same figure at $103.1 billion. Bank of America sits well above both at $107 billion to $108 billion. A derived consensus is provider-dependent, and the roughly 0.9% gap between the two mainstream reads is ordinary, but the BofA number is a different claim altogether.
Convert those into the growth rate the company would have to commit to on the call. Guiding $103.1 billion off the $91.0 billion base is a 13.3% sequential increase, and $103.96 billion is 14.2%. Rex Shares also tracks Nvidia beating its own guidance for thirteen consecutive quarters with the size of those beats compressing from 22.8% to 4.6% across that stretch, which is the arithmetic behind why a beat has stopped functioning as a catalyst.
What A Buy Would Have to Mean at 21x Forward Earnings
The valuation carried against the August 21 settle does not look like a stock that just broke.
|
Metric
|
Value at the August 21 close
|
|
Market capitalization
|
$5.20 trillion
|
|
Trailing PE
|
32.88
|
|
Forward PE
|
21.39
|
|
Price to sales
|
20.52
|
|
Trailing twelve-month revenue
|
$253.49 billion, up 70.7%
|
|
Trailing twelve-month EPS
|
$6.53, up 110.6%
|
|
Beta, five year
|
2.21
|
Those statistics come from stockanalysis.com and are computed against the Friday settle rather than a live quote. The stock sits 9.22% below its 52-week high of $236.54, and that high is an intraday extreme taken from the range rather than a closing print, a distinction worth keeping whenever somebody quotes a drawdown measured from it.
The sell side has not followed the tape down. Consensus rating reads Strong Buy with an average target of $304.73, and Bank of America's Vivek Arya reiterated a $350 target and a Buy rating on August 18, arguing the stock trades at a 34% to 50% discount on free cash flow. Arya named his own risks in the same note and they are the right two, being a slowdown in AI spending and the $105 billion commitment behind OpenAI. Our coverage of the Ohio data center guarantee works through why vendor financing sitting inside your own demand curve is a real analytical problem rather than a talking point.
Which brings the title to an answer, and the honest one is uncomfortable. A 4.70% drawdown on a $5.2 trillion company that still carries 21x forward earnings and a 2.21 beta is not a discount, it is noise inside the range, and reading six sub-1% sessions as an entry signal treats positioning as if it were valuation. The bull case and the bear case resolve on the same sentence in the October guide, and neither one is decided by the chart that preceded it.
One mechanical note for anyone rebuilding these figures off a screen. The NVDA perpetual marked $215.20 against Friday's $214.72 settle, because the contract keeps quoting while the US exchange is shut. A mark is a venue quote and a settle is an exchange print, and those two things are never the same number.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Nvidia stock fall for six straight sessions before its August 26 earnings?
No single company event explains it. August 18 was a broad semiconductor selloff driven by oil and geopolitical risk that hit AMD and Micron considerably harder, and the remaining sessions were sub-1% drift while those peers recovered. Position reduction ahead of a dated binary release fits that pattern far better than any fundamental story does.
What is Nvidia's revenue consensus for the August 26 report?
Roughly $91.9 billion with $2.08 in earnings per share, against company guidance of $91.0 billion plus or minus 2%. Consensus therefore sits inside the guided band rather than above it, which is a much weaker setup for a headline beat than it looks like on first read.
Does a pre-earnings drawdown tell you anything about the post-earnings move?
Very little on its own, and this is where retail consistently overreads a chart. A drawdown changes the price you pay for exposure without changing the distribution of outcomes on the release itself, which is a separate matter from how options price that event, covered in our implied volatility explainer.
Can you trade NVDA while the US stock market is closed?
Yes, through a USDT-settled perpetual contract, which quotes continuously instead of on cash-session hours. That gap matters for a release landing after the 20:00 UTC close, because the equity does not trade again until the following morning while the perpetual reprices against the news immediately, the same way Bitcoin and every other 24-hour asset does.
Bottom Line
Nvidia goes into August 26 having given back 4.70% across six dated sessions ending Friday, August 21, with nothing in the reported business having changed across that stretch. The levels that frame the print are the $214.72 Friday settle as the floor of the run, $219.74 as the first ceiling above it and $225.30 as the level the whole run started from. What decides the 21:00 UTC reaction is not the second-quarter number, because $91.9 billion sits inside a band the company already gave. It is the October guide, where published estimates run from $103.1 billion to $108 billion and management has to commit to a 13% to 14% sequential step simply to meet the middle of that range. A company that has beaten its own guidance thirteen quarters running while the size of those beats shrank by a factor of five does not get graded on the beat any more.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.
