To The Moon

$NVDA: Jensen Huang has resigned. Has the investment case changed? A sell put view.

What happened (Thursday, Nov 12)

• Nvidia's board announced that Jensen Huang has resigned as president, CEO and director, effective immediately. It's the first CEO change in the company's 33-year history.

• CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO and keeps the CFO role. She joined Nvidia in September 2013 after Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments.

• Harvey C. Jones becomes Nvidia's first-ever board chair. The board is looking at internal and external candidates for the permanent job.

• Nvidia said at first that Huang would stay on during the investigation. That changed late Wednesday, when reports surfaced of a separate affair with an Nvidia executive.

How the stock traded

• It fell as much as 14% intraday and hit a new 52-week low

• It closed at $166.19, down 4.34%, holding just above a $4 trillion market value

• Retail traders put in the biggest opening buy orders from individual investors ever recorded (Vanda Research)

• NVDA is down 31.7% from its $243.37 52-week high

The two camps on Wall Street (Benzinga's list)

The bears:

• Evercore cut its target from $465 to $186 and downgraded to In Line. It compares NVDA to Apple in 2012.

• Bernstein: $400 → $200

• Needham: $300 → $200

• Baird: $500 → $200, downgraded to Neutral

• Oppenheimer withdrew its price target, citing no clear successor and a risk that talent leaves with Huang

The bulls:

• Cantor: $350 → $250

• BMO: $340 → $240

• RBC: $330 → $230

• Citi: $285 → $225

• Dan Ives: $225

• Goldman: $300 → $220

Even the lowest target ($186) is about 12% above Thursday's close.

Has the investment case changed?

What stays the same:

• The product roadmap and customer commitments. The board says both continue "without interruption."

• Q3 guidance is unchanged at $108B ±2%

• The CUDA software ecosystem doesn't depend on one person

What changed:

• The leadership premium. Citi's analysts: "A leadership transition creates an overhang on the stock given his central role in strategy, product vision, customer relationships, and investor confidence."

• No named successor. Ives expects Kress to serve about a year, with the permanent CEO coming from outside.

• Talent retention and continued scrutiny over China

My read: the chips didn't change on Thursday. The premium for having Jensen did. That's a valuation reset, not a demand reset.

Checking it against my rules

❌ Trend: $166.19 against a 200-day around $204, 18.8% below

❌ Earnings: Nov 17, inside any December expiry. It will also be Kress's first call as interim CEO.

⚠️ Volatility: IV is probably 60–70%. The premium is rich, but the risk is real.

The strike resets again

On Nov 8 my line was $160. On Nov 10 it was $150. Today it's $140.

Dec 18 expiry, 35 days:

• 1 standard deviation down ≈ $130–135

• $135 has delta 0.11–0.14, too far out to be worth selling

• $140 has delta 0.15–0.18, model premium ≈ $2.60–3.90, break-even ≈ $137

• $140 is 15.8% below Thursday's close, with about 76–80% model odds of expiring worthless

When I'll sell it

1. Nov 17 earnings are behind us, and Kress's guidance holds

2. A daily close back above the 200-day

Then it's Tier 1: 5% size, stop at 2× the credit, take profit at 50%, re-priced at that day's IV.

The verdict: a CEO exit is either a clearing event or the start of a longer slide, and Nov 17 decides which. I sell after the call, not before. The strike moves with the price; my rules don't.

Personal framework, education only, not advice. Premiums are Black-Scholes estimates, not live quotes. Options carry risk, including assignment.

#NVDA #Nvidia #JensenHuang #SellPut #Options