Image Source: Pixabay

With one week to go before its next earnings disclosure, Nvidia (NVDA) finds itself down slightly. On the technical front, NVDA stock has largely been in a holding pattern since August, though it did pop above the $200 level late last month. However, with competition heating up in the semiconductor and artificial-intelligence arenas, Nvidia may invite greater scrutiny this time around.

For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, analysts anticipate the chipmaker to post earnings per share of $1.25 on revenue of $54.74 billion. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported EPS of 81 cents on sales of $35.08 billion. These figures beat analysts’ consensus targets of 75 cents and $33.17 billion, respectively.

Currently, NVDA stock almost has a universal Strong Buy assessment among Wall Street experts. Only two contrarians — one Hold and one Sell rating — have cast varying degrees of skepticism on the semiconductor giant.

Still, Nvidia may face a much brighter spotlight in its earnings disclosure due to rising competition. Recently, rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) hosted its Investor Day, with the company laying out an ambitious roadmap targeting a rapid expansion of AI and compute markets. Subsequently, AMD stock jumped more than 8% during the midweek session.

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Despite the dramatic pop and the slight downturn in NVDA stock, the bigger of the two chipmakers may be more appealing. On the quantitative front, AMD is structured in a balanced 5-5-U sequence; that is, in the trailing 10 weeks, the security printed five up weeks and five down weeks, with an overall upward slope.

Under this setup, the forward 10-week median returns would like slip below the expected distributional curve of baseline conditions, which aggregates all sequences since January 2019. From an empirical standpoint, that’s not an appealing picture.

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On the other hand, NVDA stock is structured in a slightly more aggressive 6-4-U sequence. Under this setup, the expected distributional curve would be slightly better than what would normally be expected under baseline conditions. Specifically, the fat-tail reward (on the right side) would jut out more than $20 above normal expectations.

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