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Nvidia's results “have change into as essential to US markets as major economic data,” writes MainFT. For some, they’re one other excuse to get drunk on Wednesday afternoon.
On a sweltering summer day in New York, about 4 dozen sweaty Nvidia fans gather at a StoreHouse sports bar on Sixth Avenue, counting down the times until the chipmaker releases its second-quarter earnings, their eyes glued to the seven big screens showing CNBC's “Fast Money” as a substitute of the second round of the U.S. Open.
The brains behind this gathering is Lauren Balik, an equity analyst who earlier within the day invited “longs, shorts and everybody else” to drink a beer in honor of Wall Street's hottest stock. And so FTAV – sandwiched between an off-duty exotic derivatives trader and a young tech guy who swears he'll sell his Nvidia holdings “immediately” in the event that they hit $140 – was glad to oblige.
It's on. $NVDA NYC Watch Party, August 28, 3:30pm – ? on the Storehouse.
They allow us to broadcast the quarterly earnings call over loudspeakers and to proceed to broadcast CNBC and other financial news channels on some televisions.
I'm excited. This goes to be fun either way.
Send me a message to Lauren at … https://t.co/kUIw5qKjFg pic.twitter.com/FnuJPxt8As
— Lauren Back (@laurenback) 27 August 2024
Balik tells FTAV she is “more often than not very pessimistic.” The three glowing bubble guns she handed out to the mostly male audience were testament to this playful skepticism. “I really like a superb bubble greater than anything,” she continues. “Finding out when it's going to pop is such a fun little game.”
“I believed, why not, let’s host this event,” she shouts over the tumult.
We're at a sports bar. All sports result in gambling, and Wall Street has all the time been about gambling. So I believed, why not mix the 2? If you watch football or baseball and bet money, it's the identical with stocks. People get attached to this stuff, for higher or for worse. That's the best way our times work.
Balik has “bubbles inside her,” she adds. “I remember growing up in Virginia and having plenty of friends whose parents worked at the massive Internet corporations (before the dot-com crash). Mark Lynch, the CFO of Microstrategy, taught me business in highschool. I used to be his star student! It's very funny.”
The exotic derivatives trader expressed his bleak opinion: “The indisputable fact that CNBC has its own countdown to those results that a bunch of lemmings like me are watching in a bar… it's over, man. It's over.”
The countdown itself begins before we discover out exactly what “it” is likely to be. Fueled by expensive craft beer, the gang yells FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE and lets out a collective “HELL YEAH” because the stock price initially ticks upward. A person in a baseball cap throws his arms within the air in joy. Another immediately downs a pint of Bud Light. An offended sports fan at the opposite end of the bar looks on in confusion.
But the nice times don't last. Although nobody within the room seems to care much in the intervening time, revenue for the three months to July got here in at $30 billion — up 122 percent from a 12 months ago, but barely greater than the $28.7 billion analysts expected. In addition, Nvidia expects revenue for the present quarter to be $32.5 billion, up 2 percent, just above expectations. In Nvidia's profit world, it is a blip, and the stock price is sinking to a chorus of boos.
Still with an enormous smile on his face, Balik tells us that the bar owner had a baby this morning. “Maybe Nvidia can be a pleasant middle name. … See you here next quarter?”
Further reading
— Nvidia shares fall whilst revenue greater than doubles (MainFT)
