Can You Make Money Off NVIDIA Stock Now

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NVIDIA (NVDA) stock closed at $213.66 on October 29, 2026, 10.7% below its highest close of the past year on October 6. If you expect the AI build-out to keep going, this decline may look like a cheaper entry point. For that trade to pay off, NVIDIA must keep converting record sales into cash, even as it uses its balance sheet to back some of the AI labs that buy from it. The current drop also has to play out like the company's previous declines. So what did buying NVIDIA after its earlier sharp falls earn?

Most NVIDIA Dip Buyers Were Ahead A Year Later

Most of these buyers made money, though usually after a further slide in the share price. Since January 2010, NVIDIA stock has dropped 20% or more within 30 trading days 12 times. In nine of those instances, the shares traded higher 252 trading days, or about a year, later. At the median, $10,000 invested on the day of such a decline was worth about $15,900 a year later. In the other three cases, occurring twice in 2011 and once in January 2022, shares were lower a year after the fall, with the worst drop measuring 24%.

Collecting those gains required patience. At the median, the lowest close in the year following a drop sat 22.4% below the initial purchase price. The year's highest price came about 300 calendar days, roughly ten months, after the fall. An investor buying the dip in January 2022 saw the shares close as much as 53.5% below the price paid.

NVIDIA's Sales More Than Doubled, But Cash Lagged

Sales are still growing quickly, but a smaller share of them arrived as cash in the latest quarter. NVIDIA reported revenue of $96.2 billion in fiscal Q2 2027, up 105.9% from a year earlier. Management guided to $108 billion for fiscal Q3, plus or minus 2%. The company's operating margin rose to 66.2%, compared with 60.8% a year earlier. At today's price, you pay 26.8 times NVIDIA's earnings over the past twelve months, against a multiple of 22.8 for the S&P 500.

Yet cash from operations came to 25.0% of revenue in fiscal Q2 2027, down from 61.7% the quarter before. On the August 26 call, management said days of sales outstanding, the time customers take to pay, rose to 60 days, reflecting extended payment terms for large purchases by certain investment-grade customers. Inventory also rose to $32 billion as NVIDIA prepared for the Vera Rubin launch. Since then, NVIDIA has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, a deal the Justice Department is now examining, and added $150 billion to its share buyback.

Which Customers Will Pay For NVIDIA's Expected Sales?

Some buyers will be AI labs backed by NVIDIA's own balance sheet. Management expects demand from those labs to make up roughly a quarter of NVIDIA's business in fiscal 2028. For one frontier AI lab, the company will provide credit enhancement for nearly 2 gigawatts of compute. Management acknowledged market debate over commercial financing structures, characterizing its vendor financing and credit enhancements as standard ecosystem enablement. Management also expects revenue to grow about 70% in fiscal 2028, calling that outlook supply-constrained. This forecast represents what NVIDIA expects to sell, not how much of that total will come in as cash, or how soon.

NVIDIA's earlier sharp falls mostly left buyers ahead a year later, usually after a deeper initial slide. Sales are still growing quickly, but incoming cash did not keep pace in the latest quarter. NVIDIA is expected to report fiscal Q3 2027 results in November 2026, and cash from operations against revenue is the number to watch in that report.

What Would Another Fall In NVIDIA Do To Your Plan?

A fall hurts most when one stock is a large part of what you own, and selling it to spread the risk can bring a large tax bill. Our partner advisory firm offers a free strategy review of ways to put a floor under a large position and unwind it with less tax.

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