Retail traders were out in force to buy the dip in AI darling Nvidia

Retailer traders took Nvidia’ s recent sell-off as a buying opportunity, snapping up shares of the dominant artificial intelligence chipmaker amid the volatility. The cohort bought $1.8 billion worth of Nvidia shares over the past week as the Jensen Huang-led company suffered a quick pullback, according to JPMorgan data. At the single-stock level, that accounted for almost all of the $2.1 billion that retail traders spent on individual securities last week, the bank said. Nvidia’s sell-off started last Thursday after it temporarily unseated Microsoft as the most valuable public company in the U.S. It went on to see a 13% slump in the span of just three days. The stock has since recouped some of those losses, and the shares are now off just 2% so far this week. Nvidia makes valuable AI graphics processing units (GPUs) that are being sold to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle and Meta Platforms to power their data centers and cloud services. Despite the latest decline, Nvidia has more than doubled in 2024, climbing 150% on top of last year’s 239% rally. The chipmaker, which has passed a $3 trillion valuation, has become so prominent that it’s now a bellwether that can sway the direction of the entire stock market. JPMorgan estimated that retail investors are up 179% trading Nvidia this year, topping the stock’s year-to-date performance. Meanwhile, other megacap tech stocks fared poorly among individual investors last week, JPMorgan said. Advanced Micro Devices saw net sales of $163 million, Microsoft had a net drawdown of $158 million and Tesla $122 million.