No other company has been as important as NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) in 2025, but today retail investors are sour on the world’s first $5 trillion company.
At the market open, sentiment has collapsed to a bearish level of 41/100, a sharp reversal from a high of 89/100 as recently as October 26. This despite shares opening up more than 3%.
Sentiment on Reddit and X turned sharply negative between 3am and 6am ET this morning, dropping 19 points just before the market open. Posts on r/wallstreetbets and r/options are currently dominated not by NVDA-specific concerns but by viral loss threads and general trading anxiety about the market as a whole.
One publication stands out as contributing the most to the change in tone. It is about a trader facing a $6.5 million margin call and has been circulating on various subreddits.
Tried to trade credit spreads, failed miserably ($6.5 million margin call)
byu/Toxicview on wallstreetbets
However, the negativity lacks substance when examined closely, and is much more about individual errors than NVIDIA directly. There is no recent negative news about the company itself that is driving the change. That doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to be bearish, just that nothing new has materialized as of this morning. Entering the open market today, the bears would say:
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Valuation remains stretched at a forward P/E of 29.94
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The stock became overbought in late October with RSI levels approaching 73.
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Widespread market anxiety is contagious. When traders see a trend of massive losses, they sell stocks to reduce risk, even from fundamentally sound positions.
Despite the sentiment reading of 41/100, the stock is still up 7.99% over the past month and 48.93% over the past year. This disconnect between how negative retail traders feel and how stocks are actually trading suggests that the change in sentiment may be more emotional than predictive.
The real question for investors is whether this morning’s pessimism is an important indicator of coming selling pressure or a temporary capitulation that could quickly reverse. As we have discussed in the past, such as in the cases of Chipotle (NYSE: CMG), many times retail traders and investors catch on early to the deterioration thesis.
In that case, investors would have done well to pay attention to Chipotle’s crumbling sentiment and save themselves a painful 20% post-earnings drop.
Today, it doesn’t seem like anything is fundamentally wrong with NVIDIA stock, and it’s rising on the news. The most important thing is to watch the sentiment and see if it bounces above 50/100 (a positive score) or continues to collapse below 41/100. If it’s the latter, then it’s a stronger sign that the “vibes” are turning against the AI ​​king stock of 2025.