Will Nvidia Stock Jump 20% In The Next 30 Days?
Follow the whole story: every piece in this series is on our AI storyline page.
Could Nvidia jump 20% in the next 30 days? Yes, it could, and it has done it many times before. We’ll give you the real odds, the numbers behind the business, the dated catalyst and how far it has fallen before. But here’s the number the pros reach for first after a day like Thursday: not where Nvidia trades in December, but how much of it they already own, counting the Nvidia hiding inside their index funds. We’ll come back to it at the end.
“Fear is a planning mistake.” – Anonymous
What Happened To Nvidia This Week?
Nvidia closed Thursday at about $181.60, down about 9.3% from Wednesday’s $200.13. That came on a rough day for everything: the S&P 500 fund SPY fell 4.4% to $733.00 and the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ 6.5%. The chip makers fell harder still: Broadcom lost about 10% and the chip fund SMH about 11%.
It was the AI trade unwinding: the chip makers and the companies building the power and data centers behind AI fell hardest. The worry has been building for weeks. Power is the bottleneck, opposition to new data centers is growing town by town, and the new Congress can lean on both; a Wall Street Journal article argued on Thursday that the backlash could play into the hands of Big Tech. We flagged power as the AI trade’s real risk on Nov 2, in “Nvidia Stock’s Real Risk Isn’t China. It’s Power.” Nvidia had held up earlier in the week while the data-center builders fell hard; whether it is now the dip to buy is the question in should you buy Nvidia stock at $182?
So, Could It Jump 20% In 30 Days?
Here’s the straight answer from Nvidia’s own history. We looked at every 30-day stretch (21 trading days) in the Trefis price cache and counted how often the stock ended at least 20% higher, or at least 20% lower:
| Since | Up 20%+ | Down 20%+ |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 13% of stretches | 3.5% |
| 2021 | 15% of stretches | 3.3% |
| After a 7%+ down day (44 from 2010 to 2025) | 7 of 44 | 4 of 44 |
A 20% month for Nvidia is uncommon, not rare: roughly 1 in 7 or 8, and about 1 in 6 after a big down day.
Those stretches overlap, so treat them as a feel for the odds, not a forecast. The closer match is the last row. Thirty days after Nvidia’s 44 earlier days of 7%+ falls since 2010, it was higher 23 times and lower 21, with a median gain of about 4%. The big rebounds came mostly after the March 2020 crash and the late-2022 bottom; two of the four further 20% falls came in late 2018. So the honest answer: a 20% jump is possible, it has happened after big drops before, and a month after a big down day Nvidia has been close to a coin flip.
What Are You Paying For?
A 20% jump from about $181.60 gets you to about $218. That’s not a new high. Nvidia closed at $217.94 just seven trading days earlier, on October 27. So the upside case isn’t a moonshot; it’s a return to late October. Whether that’s a fair price depends on the business, and here the numbers are striking:
| Measure | Nvidia | S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|
| P/E at Thursday’s close | about 23 | about 23 |
| Sales, past 12 months | $303B, +83% | |
| Operating margin (5-yr avg) | 65% (50%) | |
| Free cash flow | $127B, 42% of sales | |
| 12-month return to Nov 4 | +1% | about +15% |
| 3-year return to Nov 4 | +346% | about +83% |
After Thursday, Nvidia trades at about the market’s average multiple, for a company growing sales more than 80% a year.
That’s the upside case in one line. The stock went nowhere for a year while the business kept compounding, so the multiple came down; Thursday alone took it from about 25 times earnings at Wednesday’s close to about 23. The other side of the same line: a market that pays an average multiple for 83% growth is telling you it doubts the growth lasts. That doubt is exactly the power and data-center question above.
Next to its peers, Nvidia looks neither cheapest nor most expensive, but it has the widest margins of the big designers, Micron’s memory-cycle peak aside:
| Company | P/E | Sales growth | Op. margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nvidia | 23 | +83% | 65% |
| Broadcom | 37 | +49% | 49% |
| AMD | 88 | +42% | 18% |
| Micron | 9 | +256% | 75% |
| Microsoft (buyer) | 28 | +18% | 47% |
P/E at Thursday’s close; sales growth and margin over the past 12 months.
Micron’s low multiple is the warning label on the whole group: memory makers earn their biggest profits at the top of a cycle, and investors price that in. The dated catalyst for Nvidia is its quarterly report: Nvidia’s notice lists Tuesday, Nov 17, after the close. That report, and what the big buyers say about next year’s data-center spending, will move the stock more than anything we can measure now.
How Low Can It Go?
This belongs right next to the upside case. Here are Nvidia’s biggest falls, measured on dividend-adjusted closes, with how long it took to get back to the old high:
| Fall | Drop | Bottom | Back to peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08 | −85% | Nov 2008 | Apr 2016 |
| 2018 | −56% | Dec 2018 | Feb 2020 |
| 2020 | −38% | Mar 2020 | May 2020 |
| 2021-22 | −66% | Oct 2022 | May 2023 |
| 2025 | −37% | Apr 2025 | Jun 2025 |
| SPY, 2022 (for scale) | −25% | Oct 2022 | Dec 2023 |
Nvidia has lost more than half its value three times since 2007. Once it took more than seven years to get back.
The 2018 fall took less than three months to hit bottom and about 14 months more to recover. The 2022 fall went on for almost eleven months, then recovered in about seven. In 2020 and 2022, Nvidia fell harder than SPY and still got back to its old high months before SPY did. The 2008 case is the exception worth remembering: a 2007 buyer waited until 2016.
Put those next to today. From the October 6 high of $239.24, a 2020-size fall would mean about $148, a 2018-size fall about $105, and a 2022-size fall about $81. We’re not saying any of those will happen. We’re saying a long-run Nvidia owner has lived through each of them, and your plan should be able to as well.
What’s The Bigger Number?
Here’s what’s less random than the next 30 days: how much of your money rides on this one stock. If you own an S&P 500 fund, you own Nvidia whether you bought it or not. Nvidia is 7.30% of SPY, its second-largest holding after Apple.
Say you have $1 million, with 70% in an S&P 500 fund and no Nvidia shares at all. You still own about $51,000 of Nvidia, 5.1% of everything. Buy another 5% directly on the dip and you’re at about 10%, and Thursday’s fall alone would have cost you about $9,400 on it. That number is something you can find this weekend and act on. The 30-day move isn’t.
And it’s not just Nvidia. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta, the companies buying Nvidia’s chips, plus Broadcom, add up to about 19% more of SPY. Together with Nvidia that’s roughly 26.5% of the fund riding on one spending boom.
What Does A Long-Run Nvidia Owner Do Now?
Three steps, none of which needs a guess about December.
1. Add up your total Nvidia. Direct shares, plus your S&P 500 fund times 7.30%, plus any Nasdaq-100 or chip fund times its Nvidia weight (about 8% in QQQ and about 20% in SMH in late October). Write down one number, as a share of your portfolio.
2. Set your band before Nov 17. Pick the most you’d want in one stock, say 8% to 10% of your portfolio, and the level that makes you trim, say 12%. If you’re under the band and you believe in the business, add in pieces. If you’re over it, trim back to the band, whatever the price did.
3. Decide what you do after a 2022-size fall. If Nvidia went to about $81, would you buy, hold or sell? Whatever the answer, write it down now, while you’re not looking at a red screen.
What this replaces: buying a big chunk on Friday morning because a 20% bounce feels likely, or selling because Thursday hurt. The risk: if Nvidia jumps 20% and you were under your band, you’ll own less of the jump. That’s the price of a plan that also works if it falls another third.
A 20% month is a 1-in-7 shot; your exposure is a number. Since 2016, Nvidia rose 20% or more in about 13% of 30-day stretches. After Thursday it trades near the market’s multiple, about 23 times earnings, with sales up 83% and $127 billion of free cash flow, and it has fallen 56% and 66% in the past eight years. Nvidia is 7.30% of SPY, so most investors own more than they think. Add up your total, set a band before the Nov 17 report, and decide now what you’d do after a 2022-size fall.
What Should You Ask Next?
- How much Nvidia do you really own? The arithmetic for index funds, chip funds and the AI buyers.
- Will stocks rebound today, or do you have a plan? The last 21 days like Thursday.
Follow this story with us: we’ll come back after Nvidia’s report with what changed, and what didn’t, for a long-run owner.
Do You Know Your Total Nvidia Number?
Most people don’t, and it’s the one worth knowing before earnings. If you have $1 million or more invested, get a second opinion from a Trefis expert partner advisor in a free 15-minute call, or let Invest With Trefis build and run the plan for you.
For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.