AMD Beats Nvidia by 53 Points, Its Widest Gap Since 1999

The record run cracked on Friday. AMD fell 8.75%, closing at $534.06, then lost another 2.41% in after-hours trading to land at $521.20. Volume hit 48.6 million shares, nearly double the three-month average, and analysts at The Motley Fool tied part of the slide to profit-taking after the surge.

It followed AMD's widest five-day beat of Nvidia since Nvidia went public in January 1999. According to The Kobeissi Letter, AMD outperformed by 53.2 percentage points, rallying 44.7% while Nvidia dropped 8.5%. The previous record, set in April 2016, stood at 49.9 points.

The year-to-date gap is even wider. AMD has gained 149.4% since January 1 while Nvidia is down 12.7% as of Friday's close, a spread of about 162 percentage points. The stretch overlapped with growing scrutiny of Jensen Huang, who, according to the report, quit as Nvidia CEO on November 12. Nvidia named CFO Colette Kress interim CEO while its board searches for a permanent replacement.

AMD handed buyers its own numbers to chew on. Third-quarter revenue rose 45% from a year earlier to a record $13.4 billion, with data center sales nearly doubling to $8.5 billion. The Kobeissi Letter summed it up on X: AMD has been a major beneficiary of Nvidia's historic volatility.

Chip stocks sold off as a group, and the 10-year Treasury yield stayed above 5% after October's producer price index. Rising yields tend to hit growth stocks hardest, since their value rests on profits expected years ahead.

Nvidia's earnings land Tuesday after the US market closes. The company guided for $108 billion in third-quarter revenue, plus or minus 2%, while analysts polled by LSEG expect about $109.2 billion and adjusted earnings of $2.48 per share. The quarter closed on October 25, before Huang resigned, so the results reflect his tenure, and the guidance for the next quarter will be the first issued under Kress.