Nvidia reports earnings after the market closes Wednesday. With the possible exception of Tesla , no other stock generates the kind of short-term trading interest Nvidia does. There’s an entire trading ecosystem built around Nvidia now. It is, for example, one of the most actively traded single-stock options in the market. Aside from significant options activity, a large trading ecosystem has also developed around Nvidia in the world of exchange-trade funds. ETFs own more than four billion shares of Nvidia, about 17% of the 24.49 billion total shares outstanding, according to Factset. Not surprisingly, broad market ETFs are the largest holders of Nvidia. Largest ETF holders of Nvidia (shares held, as of 1/31/25) Vanguard Total Stock Market ( VTI ) 731 million Vanguard S & P 500 ( VOO ) 675 m SPDR S & P 500 ( SPY ) 300 m iShares Core S & P 500 ( IVV ) 287 m Vanguard Growth Index ( VUG ) 235 m Source: ETF Action However, holders of these funds are mostly passive investors. Tech ETFs are massive holders of Nvidia Beyond these broad funds, there are very large holdings of Nvidia in technology ETFs and especially semiconductor ETFs. Other large ETF holders of Nvidia (shares held, as of 1/31/25) Vanguard Information Technology ( VGT ) 116 million Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund ( XLK ) 73.5 m VanEck Semicondutor ( SMH ) 33 m Shares U.S. Technology ETF ( IYW ) 21.6 m iShares Semiconductor ETF ( SOXX ) 7.7 m Source: ETF Action While the dollar value of the holdings are smaller than in the broader ETFs above, the concentration is much higher. For example, the VanEck Semicondutor ETF has roughly 19% of its $23 billion market capitalization in Nvidia. More importantly, these tech ETFs, and particularly thematic tech ETFs like the semiconductor ETFs, are only partially held as passive investments. A very large part of these are now employed on a tactical level: these are traded on a daily basis. As a result, ETFs like the Van Eck Semiconductor often see heavier volume and volatility on days around Nvidia’s earnings. A leader in single-stock leveraged/inverse ETFs Finally, in the last year there is enormous daily trading in leveraged and inverse Nvidia ETFs. Aside from a few Tesla and Microstrategy leveraged/long ETFs, Nvidia leveraged/long ETFs dominate this end of the market. Nvidia leveraged/inverse ETFs (by market capitalization) Graniteshares 2x Long NVDA Daily ( NVDL ) $3.7 billion Direxion Daily NVDA Bull 2x Shares ( NVDU ) $482 million GraniteShares 2x Short NVDA Daily ETF ( NVD ) $106 m Direxion Daily NVDA Bear 1x ( NVDD ) $39 m Two things to note: 1) While the total amount of money is relatively small, these are routinely among the most actively-traded ETFs by dollar volume (in other words, there is massive turnover in the funds every day), and 2) The amount of money in the bullish (long) ETFs is far greater than the amount of money in the bear bets. That’s because Nvidia has generally been on an upswing: in the two years from 2023 to 2024, it was up about 800%, so huge numbers of traders are sitting on enormous potential profits, and active traders like these are momentum traders. This raises the possibility that these leveraged/inverse ETFs are a decent gauge of investor sentiment. This year, there has been outflows from the long ETF ( NVDL ), and inflows into both short ETFs (NVD and NVDS). What’s it mean? It’s a sign that, after years of bullish sentiment, there are some skeptics emerging in the Nvidia camp.
