Nvidia Market Cap Holds $4 Trillion as Retail Buyers Set a Record

Nvidia market cap fell below $4 trillion on Thursday, November 12, for the first time since July 2025, then climbed back just above that line by the close, CNBC and NBC News reported. The stock ended the day down 4.3% at $166.19 after dropping more than 14% in early trading, on the day Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive.

Two groups pulled in opposite directions. Wall Street analysts downgraded the stock in a wave. Small investors bought the opening drop in record size. On Friday morning the shares were 1.8% higher in premarket trading as of 5 a.m. Eastern time, according to CNBC.

$4T

Market value Nvidia fell below during Thursday's session, then regained

$111M

Net retail buying in the first half hour, a record for the stock, per Vanda Research

12x

Forward earnings multiple, the lowest since November 2012, per LSEG

$109.2B

Revenue analysts expect in Tuesday's results, per LSEG

How much value Nvidia has lost

The fall has been building for weeks. Nvidia shares have erased about $500 billion in value this week alone, NBC News reported, and the company has shed more than $1 trillion in the past month, according to Reuters. As of Thursday the stock was on pace for a sixth straight weekly decline, which CNBC said would be its longest losing streak since 2012.

Nvidia was worth $5 trillion in October 2025, CNBC noted. It had closed above $4 trillion every day since July 2025, and Thursday's finish kept that run alive by a narrow margin.

Retail buyers set a record at the open

Retail investors bought a net $111 million of Nvidia stock in the first half hour of Thursday's session, Reuters reported, citing data from Vanda Research. It was the biggest opening bid on record for the stock.

Money also moved to Nvidia's rivals. AMD and Broadcom each rose more than 4%, Reuters reported, and the Philadelphia semiconductor index closed down 0.5%, according to NBC News. Companies that depend on Nvidia fared worse: CoreWeave fell about 7% and Nebius about 17%.

Wall Street downgrades pile up

At least six analysts downgraded Nvidia between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, CNBC reported. Several pointed to the same issue. Evercore wrote that the company has no obvious succession plan, and KeyBanc said finding a successor would be challenging. Chief financial officer Colette Kress is interim chief executive while the board searches.

The downgrades came with an odd admission about price. Nvidia trades at about 12 times its expected earnings for the next 12 months, its lowest multiple since November 2012, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. Stacy Rasgon, the Bernstein analyst who halved his target, said "the shares are almost absurdly cheap," CNBC reported. Evercore said it expects the multiple to keep compressing. A low multiple measures what investors will pay for forecast profits. It says nothing about whether the forecasts hold under new leadership.

Why Nvidia's value matters to the rest of AI

Nvidia is a financier as well as a supplier. In August it said it would provide up to $105 billion in financing for an OpenAI data center in Ohio, and it has put equity into CoreWeave and Nebius, CNBC reported. A CNBC segment on Thursday put the company's guarantees to other firms at an estimated $400 billion. We mapped those links in AI Circular Deals.

Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, told Reuters it was an open question whether a step back by Nvidia would cut off funding to smaller companies. A lower share price and a board in transition do not change existing contracts. They could change how freely Nvidia writes new ones.

What the AI Bubble Index says

The AI Bubble Index read 62.0 after Thursday's close, in its Normal band, against 62.7 a week earlier. Sentiment and attention is the hottest family at 97.5, momentum sits at 52.6, and Fragility, at 68.8, is above Euphoria at 62.7. The dashboard shows each family.

Nvidia is among the largest companies in the S&P 500, so its swings feed into the index's valuation and concentration family, as we showed in Magnificent Seven Share of S&P 500. One day's reading should not be over-read. Our guide to Magnificent Seven concentration risk explains why a single stock can move so much of the market.