Nvidia Has Shed $1.7 Trillion in Five Weeks; Ives Prices the Next Leg

Nvidia closed Tuesday at $168.89, down 5.5% on the day and 29.4% below its record close of $239.24 on October 6. Five weeks, about $1.7 trillion of market value across 24.1 billion shares. About $429 billion of that vanished in the two sessions after Jensen Huang told employees on Sunday that he had been unfaithful to his wife, in a relationship with a woman U.S. intelligence officials suspect worked for a Chinese spy agency.

For scale, Enron was worth roughly $68 billion at its August 2000 peak. Nvidia's two-day loss equals about six Enrons. The slide since October is worth about twenty-five.

What is the market pricing?

The drop reads as two fears priced at once: that Nvidia may have to run without its founder, and that Washington may close China to its chips for good. The catch is that Tuesday's fall came on a day the whole market dropped after a hot inflation report. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives, the analyst who put a number on the first risk, still puts the chance Huang is removed at about 15%.

Ives wrote on Tuesday that if Huang were removed as CEO, "Nvidia is worth a lot less (25%-30%) as a company/stock," and that "Jensen is not replaceable." He kept his Outperform rating and his $300 target, 78% above Tuesday's close, because he expects Huang to stay. At the top of his range, a 30% cut from $168.89 puts the stock near $118 and removes another $1.2 trillion of value. At 25% it lands near $127.

What is China actually worth?

The second leg belongs to Congress. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks want their AI Overwatch Act, which would let lawmakers review and block advanced chip exports to China, attached to the defense bill in the coming weeks. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries backs the Senate's chip limits in the final bill.

The Information reported Tuesday that the network around the woman in Huang's case moved at least $7.5 billion of Nvidia hardware into China since 2023; Reuters could not verify it.

Nvidia's own 10-Q, for the quarter ended July 26, shows $7.9 billion of revenue from customers headquartered in China including Hong Kong, out of $96.2 billion in total, about 8%. China was 7% in the first half of the fiscal year, 9% in fiscal 2026 and 19% in fiscal 2025, before the H20 restrictions bit. Hopper data center shipments to China were under 1% of the quarter's $89 billion in data center revenue.

The higher number comes from a short seller. Culper Research argued in May that more than 20% of Nvidia's fiscal 2026 compute revenue was driven by China through diverted chips and Southeast Asian intermediaries. It is an allegation, not a filing. If it is right, the official numbers understate what a hard export regime would cost.

How the stock gets to $100

Wall Street's consensus for the fiscal year ending January 2028 is $15.91 a share in earnings on about $692 billion of revenue. At Tuesday's close the stock trades at about 11 times that. The path assumes earnings fall in proportion to revenue removed and the multiple holds, which is generous; a company losing its founder and a market at once usually gets a lower one.

• Step one, Huang removed, Ives's 30%: $168.89 becomes about $118.
• Step two, China closed, on Nvidia's own 8%: earnings fall to about $14.61 a share; the stock lands near $109.
• Step two on the short seller's 20%: earnings fall to about $12.73 a share; the stock lands near $95, a further 44% drop from Tuesday. This needs both events and the higher China number to be true.

What it does to a real position

Take a retired couple, both in their late sixties, with $2.4 million in total, most of it in index funds inside an IRA, and 1,000 Nvidia shares in a taxable account that began as 100 shares bought on January 3, 2023 at $143.15, before the 10-for-1 split in June 2024. At the October 6 peak the position was worth $239,240, a tenth of everything they own. Tuesday it closed at $168,890: $70,350 gone since the peak, $17,750 of it since Huang's letter, $9,780 on Tuesday alone.

At Ives's $118 the shares are worth $118,223, another $50,667 below Tuesday. At $109 they are worth $108,541. At $95 they are worth $94,578, which is $74,312 below Tuesday and $144,662 below the peak. Weighted by Ives's own 15% odds, the Huang risk alone is worth about $7,600 to this couple today.

What leaving costs

The couple's cost basis is $14,315, so selling everything at Tuesday's close books a long-term gain of $154,575. With $120,000 of other taxable income, the whole gain sits in the 15% federal bracket: $23,186. The 3.8% net investment income tax applies to $24,575 of the gain, or $934. Total federal tax, $24,120, leaving $144,770 in cash before state tax.

Selling half changes the arithmetic. The gain drops to $77,288, income stays under the $250,000 line, the surtax disappears, and the tax is $11,593, leaving $72,852. The 500 shares kept would be worth $59,111 at Ives's price and $47,289 at the bottom of the path.

Where the math bends

Ives's 25% to 30% is a judgment, and he says the likelier outcome is that Huang stays. The Enron comparison is about size, not kind: Enron's shareholders lost everything and claimed more than $40 billion in the class action; Nvidia's have lost 29% of a far larger company that still earns more than any company in history. The China step treats a dollar of revenue as a dollar of earnings, and Nvidia's 10-K says it was already effectively shut out of China's data center compute market, so part of the 8% is gaming and other products no bill touches. The consensus can move on November 17, when Nvidia reports after the close. And Tuesday's 5% drop arrived alongside a hot inflation print, which says the stock also moves on nothing.

The number to watch is not the price. It is whether the board's investigation and the defense bill turn Ives's 15% into something larger.