To The Moon

Post SCOTUS’s annulment of Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs on Fri, 20 Feb 2026 and Trump's subsequent move to impose a temporary 15% global tariff across the board, have thrown world trade into a new bout of confusion.

US stock market was not spared either.

On Mon 23 Feb 2026, 2nd trading day post SCOTUS’s verdict, US equities tumbled as investors grappled with fears and uncertainty over Trump’s new tariffs.

By the time market called it a day:

• DJIA: -1.66% (-821.91 to 48,804.06).

• S&P 500: -1.04% (-71.76 to 6,837.75).

• Nasdaq: -1.13% (-258.79 to 22,627.27). There were 67 52-weeks new highs and 264 new lows.

Monday’s trading volume on US exchanges was 18.39 billion shares, slightly below the 20-day average of 20.62 billion.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) saw a heavy skew toward negative momentum, finishing the day with a 2.2-to-1 ratio of declining issues to advancing issues, reflecting the broad-based sell-off triggered by new tariff uncertainties, that hit industrial and financial sectors particularly hard.

The disparity was even more pronounced at Nasdaq, due to the sharp decline in software and payment processing stocks.

• There were 1,432 advancing issues compared to 3,277 declining issues resulting in an advancing-to-declining ratio of 1-to-2.29.

• This means for every stock that managed a gain, more than 2 stocks ended the session in the red.

Stranger Things.

What was pleasantly surprise on Monday was while all 3 major US indexes fell, $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ went against the trend and rose marginally by +0.91%, ending the day at $191.55 /share. (see below)

With that, it is about -7.5% below its peak of $207.04 attained on 29 Oct 2025.

US Market and NVDA - 23 Feb 2026

In fact, NVDA has been ‘consolidating’ since its peak in October 2025, bottoming 4 months later on 5 Feb 2026.

Since then, it has been taking baby steps to slowly recapture its former highs. (see below)

Fall Agents.

Its decline was primarily driven by fears that Anthropic’s new AI tools might reduce the overall demand for specialized software and hardware.

This was compounded by investor "fatigue" over US tech giants’ massive Capex budget (totaling over $600 billion), leading to concerns that the high cost of AI might not yield enough profit.

Additionally, major customers like $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ and $Alphabet(GOOG)$ have developed their own internal chips (namely Trainium2 & Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)) in a bid to become more self-reliant, in their AI-marathon.

These factors, combined with a broader market shift where investors “rotate” and sold off expensive tech stocks in favour of other sectors, created the perfect storm for the price drop.

Despite these challenges / headwinds, NVDA’s CEO has been hard at work to tear down obstacles that impedes company’s growth opportunity.

He even ‘convinced’ Trump to allow NVDA’s custom made for Chinese market - Hooper chips (namely the H20 & H200) to be sold in China, in exchange for a respective 15% or 25% of all revenue generated from Chinese sales.

His hard work seems to have paid off as NVDA stock showed signs of recovery since 5 Feb 2026.

Based on past 5 trading days, NVDA has further recovered by +0.9% on the run up to its Q4 2025 earnings release, that investors have been eagerly waiting.

For the record, despite NVDA’s Q3 2025 earnings being an absolute smasher, the stock continued its post-peak downward trend, reacting negatively to close at $186.52 on the day of earnings and $180.64 the following day.

For Q4 2025, NVDA is approaching earnings after recovering from a sharp drop.

The AI bubble fears that have taken their toll and are subsiding.

The hope is that, aside from an earnings smasher, incoming Blackwell-trained models will reignite the high expectations for future AI models. Also, the approaching Vera Rubin launch will help.

Q4’s outlook from Q3 report:

• Revenue is expected to be $65.0 billion, ±2%.

• Gross margins (GAAP) are expected to be 74.8% ±0.5%.

• Operating expenses (GAAP) are expected to be approximately $6.7 billion.

Trade up on Thu, 26 Feb 2026 ?

$Morgan Stanley(MS)$ analyst Joseph Moore and team expect strong Q4 results from NVDA and is confident that the company will perform well for FY 2026.

Analysts, who said the last quarter was very robust, with $3 billion of upside and $10 billion of sequential revenue growth, have been disappointed by the stock market reaction.

MS noted that while shortages of parts like DRAM, NAND, HDD, optical, CPU, and power and processors usually help predict future GPU demand, that isn't happening now.

Instead, demand has remain high for every type of AI chip, including older models, making it difficult to see any slowdown.

Moore expects the ramp of Vera Rubin to happen roughly on time, but he sees potential for a steeper ramp in Rubin supply than his initial expectations.

This as forecasts have shifted from Blackwell to Rubin in H2 2026 more rapidly than expected.

Moore also highlighted that for Q3 2025, NVDA reported revenues almost $3 billion above guidance, and guided for $8 billion of sequential growth.

It therefore does not feel like there has been a deceleration.

And this is the reason why Moore believes there will be $2 billion or more of upside to the $64 billion Q4 guidance, adding that a consensus revenue estimate of $72 billion is achievable.

With that, Moore reiterated :

• An overweight “Buy” rating for NVDA.

• And a target price of $250 /share.

• Based on 26 multiple his market-weight EPS estimate for calendar year 2027 of $9.57.

• Even at this forecast, the price is a discount compared to a large-cap AI peer, $Broadcom(AVGO)$.

• He added that he believes NVDA should trade at a premium, given its higher probability of upward revisions in the near term.

Future Trajectory.

What else is NVDA doing to secure its future in the AI-race ?

For that a look at the company’s latest 13F filing should provide insights into the largest company in the US by market cap.

NVDA is not only a leading artificial intelligence chipmaker but also a tech investor whose holdings are closely watched by the market, as Wall Street often views its backing as a vote of confidence in a company’s growth prospects.

For instance, NVDA first bought shares in $CoreWeave, Inc.(CRWV)$ in early 2025, shortly before CRWV’s March IPO. Since then, CRWV is up +129%. 

CRWV, a cloud infrastructure firm, made up most (86.44%) of NVDA's reported investments in Q3 2025.

For Q4 2025, NVDA made several key shifts.

According to Whale Wisdom data:

NVDA added a sizable stake in $Intel(INTC)$:

• It initiated a 214.8 million-share position in INTC, making it the portfolio’s largest holding, at 60.48%.

• The stake’s size matches NVDA’s $5 billion investment in INTCl’s common stock at $23.28 per share - as part of a partnership to develop custom data center and personal computing products.

• With that injection, INTC’s shares are up more than +44%.

• Under that agreement, NVDA will use INTC’s CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem and integrate them into its AI infrastructure platforms.

• Partnering INTC ‘secures’ NVDA a US-based manufacturing option.

At the same time, NVDA fully exited its stake in ARM Holdings (ARM), the UK-based chip designer it failed to acquire due to regulatory reasons.

NVDA did not change its CRWV stake, keeping all 24,277,573 shares. However CRWV position’s weight in its portfolio fell to ‘only’ 13.27% after the INTC purchase.

Last but not least, NVDA added new positions in 2 smaller tech companies:

• $Synopsys(SNPS)$.

• $Nokia Oyj(NOK)$.

SNPS - past 12 mths performance

Synopsys (SNPS).

• It is one of the world’s largest providers of electronic design automation (EDA) software and chip-design IP used to build semiconductors.

• The stock collapsed in September 2025 after it reported disappointing Q3 2025 earnings.

• HSBC recently downgraded Synopsys to “Hold” from “Buy” and lowered its price target to $455 from $545.

• It cited limited near-term catalysts and headwinds across its core businesses in 2026,.

• HSBC also reported a shift toward higher-value AI and high-performance computing markets could weigh on Synopsys’s near-term performance.  

Nokia (NOK).

• Its new position in Nokia (NOK) valued at roughly $1.08 billion at the end of Q4 2025.

• The old cellphone maker is a major supplier of networking used in data centers and cloud infrastructure.

• This partnership helps ensure that consumers using generative, agentic, and physical AI applications on their devices will have seamless network experiences” said NVDA in a press release.

As per CEO Jensen Huang’s remark - ​​“Telecommunications is a critical national infrastructure… With NOK and the America’s telecom ecosystem, NVDA is equipping operators to build intelligent, adaptive networks that will define the next generation of global connectivity.

My viewpoints: (mine only)

From where I am seated, I see NVDA slowly but surely fortifying its position as it fights to maintain its lead in the AI-race.

It has taken interest in chip-designing app SNPS where GPU-accelerated EPA makes for 30x faster simulations in chip design, verification, lithography, and digital twins.

With INTC, it secured an alternate manufacturing based, a ‘safeguard’ against its lead supplier TSM.

With CRWV that builds specialized data centers optimized for NVDA hardware, consuming its products.

With NOK, they are collaborating on AI-powered telecom networks, to drive AI-RAN for 5G-Advanced and 6G.

Can you see it now, how NVDA is building an ecosystem that will serve it well to get itself fully entrench in the world of artificial intelligence.

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