Whenever I hang out with my friend Alex, I immediately regret my lack of classical education. Alex plays at least three musical instruments, speaks a few languages, including his wife’s native Polish, codes in at least four different computer languages, and studied the classics at Oxford.

It’s lovely to have friends who are polymath renaissance men. But it’d be better if I were one myself. Sure, I love The Iliad and The Odyssey, but I don’t know my Aeschylus from my Euripides… yet.

So I was only today years old when I found out NVDA, or Nvidia, was named after Invidia, the Roman goddess of envy and retribution, thanks to my friend and colleague Chris Campbell’s excellent write-up in Altucher Confidential.

From Chris:

Derived from the Latin "invidia," meaning envy, the name is a nod to a lesser-known Roman goddess. [Note from SR: Her name is Nemesis in Greek mythology.]

In Roman myth, Invidia was often portrayed as a green-tinged figure with a powerful gaze. Her "evil eye" of envy was believed capable of shaping destinies and toppling the mighty.

Nvidia’s logo, a green eye, seems to reinforce the mythological link. Even their marketing slogans, like "Green with envy" for the GeForce 8 series (not to mention the occasional green goddess), lean into this symbolism.

In Italian, ti invidio means “I envy you.” I must study harder!

Old Billy Wigglestick wrote about envy in Othello. In Act III, Scene III, Iago tries to manipulate Othello by suggesting that his wife, Desdemona, is having an affair. Iago plants the seeds of jealousy in Othello’s mind by saying:

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

Are NVDA’s institutional investors too envious of other stock’s returns? How is that possible?

NVDA Stock

Let’s first look at the chart to understand where the stock is.

This is the daily chart from the last two years. NVDA has only gone up since October 2022, which was also the low point of the major markets.

From late January/early February 2023, this stock was a screaming buy (though the chart shows the split-adjusted price of the stock). From there (about $20), we’ve had a roughly 6x, or 500%, gain.

Is the chart looking admittedly toppy? Maybe.

After all, the stock fell 2% in after-hours trading Wednesday night into yesterday’s session and dropped a further 6.38% yesterday to $117.59. We’ll get to why that happened later.

Would I be willing to short the stock here? No.

And that’s the difference between guessing where a stock is going and putting your money where your mouth is.

When it comes to stock investment decisions, patience and thorough analysis are key. I want to see definitive proof that the rally is over. Yes, the price is below the 50-day moving average, but that’s not enough. Investors are upset, yes. But I don’t think it’s a wholesale offload yet.

What about those all-important numbers?

NVDA Numbers

NVDA’s numbers were fine, anyway! They just weren’t the upper deck dinger the market has come to expect from Jensen Huang.

Earnings per share: 68 cents adjusted vs. 64 cents expected

Revenue: $30.04 billion vs. $28.7 billion expected

If I were an NVDA investor, I’d have been OK with this. They beat the consensus estimates. But the institutions holding this stock have gotten dotcom greedy.

In yesterday’s Five Bullets, my friend and colleague Dave Gonigam wrote:

Sales and profits more than doubled during the second quarter. The company will buy back $50 billion of its shares — a substantial total, though less than half the record set by Apple earlier this summer.

But gross profit margins narrowed from the previous quarter — in part because of a production glitch with Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips, the ones CEO Jensen Huang touted on stage, Steve Jobs-style, back in March.

CNBC added:

Nvidia said it expects about $32.5 billion in current-quarter revenue, versus $31.7 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount. That would be an increase of 80% from a year earlier.

Revenue continues to surge at the chipmaker, rising 122% on an annual basis during the quarter, following three straight periods of year-over-year growth in excess of 200%.

Net income more than doubled to $16.6 billion, or 67 cents per share, in the quarter, from $6.18 billion, or 25 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

It’s not like NVDA is losing any money. Quite the opposite, in fact!

Wrap Up

The color green represents envy, but it also represents inexperience.

Sometimes, it’s associated with nature, growth, and harmony. Green is a calming color that reduces stress and anxiety and is associated with balance and stability.

I’m going to choose harmony and tranquility.

NVDA’s investors should do the same.

Have a wonderful, long, restful weekend. You've been working hard and you deserve this time to relax and recharge. Thank you for subscribing. On Monday, the Rude will arrive, but it’ll be a rather unique one. I hope you enjoy it.