chapotraphouse

https://www.ft.com/content/78a699f2-1f72-4796-9211-6aad2c75e747

Nvidia’s earnings “have become as important for US markets as key economic data,” writes MainFT. For some, they’d become another excuse to get drunk on a Wednesday afternoon. 

On a swelteringly hot New York summer’s day, four dozen or so sweaty Nvidia enthusiasts gather at a StoreHouse sports bar on Sixth Avenue. Together, they count down to the chipmaker’s second-quarter results, eyes fixed on the seven large screens blasting CNBC’s Fast Money rather than round two of the US Open.

The mastermind behind this gathering is Lauren Balik, an equities analyst who earlier in the day had invited “longs, shorts, and anyone else” to come grab a beer in honour of Wall Street’s hottest stock. So — sandwiched between an off-duty exotic derivatives trader and a young man in tech who swears he’ll sell his Nvidia holdings “in a heartbeat” if it hit $140 — FTAV had happily obliged.

Balik tells FTAV she’s “mostly very bearish on things”. The three light-up bubble-blowing pistols she distributed to the predominantly male crowd attested to this playful scepticism. “I love a good bubble more than anything,” she continues. “Figuring out when it’s going to burst is such a fun little game”.

“I thought why not, let’s host this event,” she shouts over the hubbub.

We’re at a sports bar. All sports lead to gambling, and Wall Street has always been about gambling, too. So I thought, why not combine the two? If you’re watching football or baseball and you’ve got money riding on it, it’s the same thing with stocks. People get attached to these things for better or worse. It’s the way our times work.

Balik has “bubbles embedded in me,” she adds. “I remember growing up in Virginia, I had loads of friends whose parents worked at the big internet companies [ahead of the dotcom crash]. Mark Lynch, Microstrategy’s chief financial officer, taught me business studies at high school. I was his star student! It’s very funny.” 

The exotic derivatives trader weighs in gloomily: “The fact there’s a dedicated countdown on CNBC to these results, watched at a bar by a bunch of lemmings like me . . . it’s over, man. It’s over.”

The countdown itself begins before we find out what, exactly, “it” might be. Juiced up on expensive craft beer, the crowd booms FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE and lets out a collective “HELL YEAH” as the share price initially ticks higher. A man in a baseball cap thrusts his arms into the air in delight. Another promptly downs a pint of Bud Light. A disgruntled sports fan at the far end of the bar looks on, confused. 

But the good times don’t last. Though no one in the room seems to care much by now, revenue in the three months through July comes in at $30bn, — up 122 per cent from a year ago but barely ahead of the $28.7bn analysts had expected. Plus, Nvidia is expecting $32.5bn in revenue for the current quarter, plus or minus 2 per cent, which is only narrowly ahead of expectations. In Nvidia earnings world, this qualifies as a blip, and the share price swings lower to a chorus of boos. 

Still smiling from ear to ear, Balik tells us the owner of the bar had a baby earlier in the day. “Maybe Nvidia would make for quite a nice middle name. . . See you here next quarter?”