Nvidia retail investors told us why they’re unfazed by DeepSeek’s market disruption and refusing to sell
January 30, 2025
1 4 minutes read
A fund that tracks Nvidia stock is one of the most popular leveraged ETFs.Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
Nvidia investors aren’t giving up on the stock after its steep sell-off this week.
Traders said they saw the DeepSeek-fueled decline as an opportunity to scoop up more shares.
Investors told BI they had faith in Nvidia’s tech dominance and long-term growth trajectory.
Nvidia’s nearly $600 billion sell-off on Monday wasn’t enough to shake the faith of retail bulls, and everyday investors told Business Insider that they saw the plunge as a golden opportunity to buy more of the stock at a discount.
The chipmaker, which soared 176% in 2024, endured a severe sell-off on Monday as DeepSeek rattled the broader tech sector. Shares of the AI darling slid 17%, causing the company to lose $589 million in market value, the steepest single-day loss in market-value history.
But many in the retail crowd are still bullish, and DeepSeek hasn’t shaken their faith in the stock even as it challenges Wall Street’s assumptions about the AI trade.
Retail traders purchased a record amount of the stock during Monday’s rout, snapping up a net $562 million worth of Nvidia shares, VandaTrack told BI. According to data stretching back to 2014, that represents the largest single-day inflow to Nvidia from retail traders in at least a decade.
Vanda said the buying spree continued on Tuesday, with retail investors purchasing a net $921 million worth of Nvidia shares in two days.
The stock clawed back some losses in Tuesday’s session, rising about 9%, but was down almost 5% Wednesday afternoon.
Nvidia traders who spoke with BI said they remained confident in the chipmaker and were planning to “buy the dip.”
Shade Gotau, a retail trader who began investing in Nvidia in 2023, said she’s invested in the chipmaker for the long haul and wasn’t shaken by the recent sell-off. In her view, fluctuations in the stock are normal, and she plans to keep purchasing more shares every month.
“The recent market sell-off didn’t shake my confidence,” she told BI, calling the recent decline a “prime opportunity.”
“If the stock continues to dip, I’ll be there to buy,” she added.
Kiana Danial, a retail trader who began investing in Nvidia in 2016 and had sold some of her shares to help fund a down payment on a home, also brushed off the losses and said she bought the dip as the stock was sold off.
Nvidia has weathered bouts of pain before, she said, pointing to 2022, when shares plunged 50% amid a broader bear market that year.
“All that’s to say, long-term investors should not get shaken by temporary market hiccups like this,” Danial said. “I bought more. I am planning to buy more.”
Danial said she doubted the lasting impact of DeepSeek, the artificial intelligence app from a Chinese startup that has upended Wall Street’s view of the AI boom this week. She questioned whether the company’s model was comparable to those of its US rivals trained on superior chips.
“Because everything that so far we know about this, first of all, is based on what they said,” she said of DeepSeek’s debut last week. “The fundamentals of a rock-solid company like Nvidia or even Microsoft, they don’t just crumble because a competitor showed up.”
Kaihan Toofan, another Nvidia retail trader, also questioned DeepSeek’s ability to compete with its larger US peers. In his opinion, he said, DeepSeek’s move to disrupt established players in the space is “laughable.”
“They’re stepping into a battlefield dominated by giants who have been promoting and refining AI technologies for years, pouring billions into research and development,” he told BI. “Their efforts seem amateurish at best.”
Toofan isn’t investing in Nvidia for the long term, he said, but he holds some shares and plans to acquire more, as he believes the sell-off was an overreaction from the market.
“I will be buying a lot once the market starts to move,” he said, pointing to the slew of megacap tech companies’ earnings coming out this week.
Trace Graham, an investor who first purchased Nvidia about a year ago, said that the stock looked expensive before its sell-off on Monday but that the sharp pullback looked like an attractive entry point.
“I think the bubble definitely did pop, and I think that the market was a little overpriced. I think we got a really big reality check, but I don’t think it’s the worst thing. And I think it’ll pick back up,” he said, adding that he would also hold on to his existing shares.
The prospect of the stock seeing a more pronounced sell-off also doesn’t concern Graham. Like other traders who spoke with BI, he doesn’t see DeepSeek as all that threatening to the AI trade.
“I think Nvidia is still super powerful,” he said, adding that DeepSeek was trained with older, less powerful Nvidia chips. “I think it’s a good thing, and I think eventually Nvidia will be back to where it was, probably even more,” he said. He added that in his view, Nvidia would continue to be the top provider of chips for other countries and companies working on AI.
Chris D., an investor who started buying Nvidia stock several years ago, said he planned to keep his shares as long as he lives so that his children could get them tax-free.
He said it was “gut-wrenching” to see the stock plummet on Monday. However, when he looked into it more and caught up on the DeepSeek news, he wasn’t as concerned, he said.
“Nvidia is booked solid for quarters on their orders,” he said, adding that he didn’t see the company’s dominance slipping.
Nvidia is the poster child of the AI trade, and the stock has risen 2,000% in the past five years. Even as some forecasters have been sounding the alarm on the potential for a larger pullback, Wall Street’s bull case for the stock and the tech sector seems to be intact a few days after the sell-off.
“At the end of the day there is only one chip company in the world launching autonomous, robotics, and broader AI use cases and that is Nvidia,” the Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note following Monday’s decline. “Launching broader AI infrastructure is a whole other ballgame and nothing with DeepSeek makes us believe anything different.”
