S&P 500 — US Large Cap Index
FTSE 100 — UK Blue Chips
Euro Stoxx 50 — Eurozone Leaders
DAX 40 — German Equities
CAC 40 — French Market Index
Nikkei 225 — Japan Benchmark
Hang Seng — Hong Kong Index
Shanghai Composite — China Mainland
ASX 200 — Australian Market
TSX Composite — Canada Index
Nifty 50 — India Large Cap
STI Index — Singapore Market
KOSPI — South Korea Index
Bovespa — Brazil Equities
JSE Top 40 — South Africa Index
IPC Index — Mexico Market
Pick of the Week: Nvidia prepares for the unknown
What a week it has been. While cracks have been appearing in the AI trade in recent months, who would have thought that Jensen Huang, the much-lauded founder/ CEO of Nvidia, would resign this week, sending another shock wave through the tech sector. The news of his resignation has caused the stock price to tank, it is currently down 8% on Thursday, previously it was down 13%, as the market weighs up what the future holds for Nvidia.
The interim CEO will be Collette Kress, the current CFO. The company also has a chair of its board of directors, for the first time in its history. Harvey Jones will be the new chair, he is the CEO of Synopsys, a company that Nvidia has a stake in. The new leadership team at Nvidia is close to Huang, Kress has been at Nvidia for 13 years, which suggests that there will not be any changes to company strategy or direction, at least in the short term.
For now, we will have to wait until next week’s earnings reports to get an idea of how the hunt for a new CEO is going and how long it will take. Kress has a finance background and not a tech background, so we expect her tenure as interim CEO will be relatively short. This news hit the stock price hard on Thursday. However, we think that we could be close to the bottom, and with Huang out of the way, the focus can return to the earnings.
There are still concerns for investors: how will the business change, and what are the ramifications if Hunag is found to have breached national security? The departure of Huang is complex for the AI sector, and has implications for the tech sector. Firstly, Nvidia acted like the central bank of AI and it financed tens of other businesses and propped up the neocloud sector. Secondly, Huang was close to global politicians, which paved the way for Nvidia powered data centres to move into multiple global markets. Jensen Huang was also a major cheerleader for the sector, and, aside from Elon Musk, he was the face of AI. Without him, how can AI companies stand up to the regulatory pressure that is likely to come from a Democratic controlled Congress and other global governments? These worries have been driving Nvidia’s share price lower this week.
The Technical View
The share price found decent support ahead of $150 on Thursday, but it has fallen sharply this week and is down 16%. The share price has been below its 200-day sma for most of this month, can Huang’s departure actually fuel a recovery rally in the stock now that its forward P/E ratio looks ridiculously cheap at 11 times future earnings? For now, the share price is in deep oversold territory and we expect the $150 level to hold. At some stage, we think that bargain hunters will come back in, but Huang is so central to Nvidia, it is natural that there will be a knee jerk reaction to his departure to the firm he co-founded. Chart 1: Nvidia stock price volatile after Jensen Huang leaves the company
Source: XTB. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
