No other company has been as important as NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) in 2025, but today retail investors are souring on earth’s first $5 trillion company.
At market open sentiment has collapsed down to a bearish 41/100, a sharp reversal from a high of 89/100 as recently as October 26th. This is despite share opening over 3% higher.
Retail Traders Turn Bearish on Market Anxiety, Not NVIDIA Specific News
Sentiment on Reddit and X shifted sharply negative between 3am and 6am ET this morning, dropping 19 points just before market open. Posts across 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 in general.
Specifically, one post about a trader facing a $6.5M margin call has resurged across multiple subreddits, while another thread about failed credit spreads continues circulating with thousands of upvotes..
The negativity lacks substance when examined closely though. There is no recent negative news about NVIDIA itself driving the shift. That doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to be bearish, simply that nothign new has materialized as of this morning. Going into market open today bears would say:
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Valuation remains stretched at a forward P/E of 29.94
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The stock ran overbought in late October with RSI levels approaching 73
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Broader market anxiety is contagious. When traders see massive loss posts trending, they sell shares to de-risk, even from fundamentally sound positions
Price Action Differs From Sentiment Score
Despite the 41/100 sentiment reading, 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 the stock is actually trading suggests the sentiment shift may be more emotional than predictive.
The real question for investors is whether this morning’s pessimism is a leading indicator of selling pressure to come or a temporary capitulation that could reverse quickly. As we’ve discussed in the past, like in cases with Chipotle (NYSE: CMG), many times retail traders and investors are early to the deteriorating thesis.
In that case, investors would have done well to pay attention to Chipotle’s crumbling sentiment and saved themselves a painful 20% drawdown after earnings
Today, it doesn’t seem anything is fundamentally amiss with NVIDIA shares, and they’re trading up on the news. The most important thing is to watch sentiment and see if it bounces back above 50/100 (a positive score), or continues to collapse below 41/100. If the latter, then that’s a stronger signal that the ‘vibes’ are turning against 2025’s AI king-maker stock.