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Retail Bought $111M of Nvidia in 30 Minutes After Huang Quit
Retail investors bought a net $111 million of Nvidia in the first 30 minutes on November 12, 2026, after CEO Jensen Huang resigned, Vanda Research said.
Professional investors spent Thursday morning cutting price targets on Nvidia. Individual investors spent it buying. In the first 30 minutes of trading on November 12, hours after the company said chief executive Jensen Huang had resigned, retail traders bought a net $111 million of Nvidia shares, more than 40 times a normal opening, according to Vanda Research data cited by CNBC. The stock opened down more than 13% and touched $148.80 before recovering to close 4.34% lower at $166.19.
The buying had been building all week. Vanda found that Nvidia accounted for 61% of all retail net buying this week, and that individual investors put $42.5 million into six leveraged ETFs offering twice the daily return of Nvidia between Monday and Wednesday. Over the same days, at least 10 analysts turned more bearish on the stock, according to FactSet, and Baird cut its price target to $200 from $500.
Buying a quality company after a sharp fall is a strategy with a long record, and on Thursday it paid off within hours, as the shares recovered most of their early loss. But the tools many traders chose make the outcome more fragile. A 2x leveraged ETF resets its exposure every day, so over a volatile stretch it can lose money even if the stock ends roughly where it started; a 14% intraday drop in the stock means a loss of about 28% on a 2x product for anyone holding it from the previous close. Regulators including FINRA and the SEC have repeatedly warned that these products are designed for single-day trading, not for holding.
The situation also carries risks a chart does not show. Nvidia now has an interim chief executive, a first-time board chair, a congressional hearing ahead and quarterly results on November 17, any of which can move the price by double digits. Buying the dip is a bet that those events will be resolved without lasting damage; it is not a bet on chip demand, which nobody has questioned this week.
If you are tempted, three questions help. Would you buy the stock at this price if you had never seen its record high? Is your position sized so that another 15% fall would not force you to sell? And if you are using a leveraged product, do you know what it does over a week rather than a day? The retail flows suggest many traders answered the first question quickly and skipped the other two.
Sources: CNBC — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns: live updates; StockTitan — Stock market today, November 12, 2026