Mathematical Money | November 13, 2026
Jensen Huang resigned on 12 Nov. $NVDA$ opened at $151.00. The close the day before was $173.73. That's 13.1% gone at the bell.
One minute later it hit $148.80. That was the low of the day.
It closed at $166.19. Down 4.3%.
So anyone who sold at the open gave up about $15 a share by the close. I wanted to know if that is normal. I checked eight older cases. It is not normal.
What was announced
From Nvidia's own release, filed with the SEC. Huang resigned as President, CEO and board member, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO and keeps the CFO job. Harvey Jones is the first Chair of the Board. The board will look at internal and external candidates.
The release gives no reason. The New York Times and Reuters have reported personal relationships, one with a woman US intelligence reportedly believes acted for China. China's foreign ministry calls that baseless.
The day, minute by minute
All New York time.
09:30, open at $151.00. Down 13.1%.
09:31, low at $148.80. Down 14.4%.
10:00, $161.82. Down 6.9%.
11:00, $165.43. Down 4.8%.
After 11:00 it went nowhere. For five hours it sat around 5% down. Close $166.19.
So it didn't recover through the day. It recovered in 90 minutes, and most of that was the first 30.
How to read a day like this
Five numbers. You can pull all five from any chart app.
1. The gap at the open. Here 13.1%.
2. When the low came. Here one minute in. A low in the first minutes means the selling was people who decided before the bell. A low at 3pm is a different day.
3. How much traded early. Nvidia did 748 million shares, about 4.5 times its normal day. 41% of that traded in the first 30 minutes. About 22% of the day's volume changed hands below $155.
4. The close against the open. Up 10.1% from the open. That is the unusual part.
5. What the rivals did. $AMD$ closed up 5.9%. $AVGO$ up 5.5%. So this was Nvidia only. The sector was fine.
One more thing I'd check. Was the news already half out? Here it was. The Wall Street Journal reported the night before that the board was preparing to remove him. Nvidia was already down more than 7% in premarket before the release came out, going by CNBC. So the open was pricing the worst version of a story people already knew.
Is the bounce normal? No.
I pulled sudden CEO exits at big US-listed companies where the stock opened at least 3% below the prior close. Eight cases. Tesla 2018, HP 2010, CSX 2017, UnitedHealth 2025, CVS 2024, Chipotle 2024, Stellantis 2024, Kroger 2025.
In those eight the stock opened 8% down on average. The best bounce from open to close was 1.8%.
Seven of the eight closed within about 2% of where they opened. The eighth was UnitedHealth, and it fell another 7.3% after the open.
Nvidia bounced 10.1% from the open. Nothing in the eight comes close. If you want to check any other case yourself, just compare that day's open with its close.
So if you take away "buy the open on a CEO shock" from Thursday, the older cases don't back you. In those, the open was more or less the price.
After that it's a coin flip. A month later four of the eight were above the old close and four were below. Eight cases is small. I'm not calling it a rule either way.
Grading my own post
In K28 I measured the gap between Nvidia and its rivals at about $38 a share. Roughly $900 billion. I called it the price on Huang's job.
On 12 Nov that gap went to about $58 a share. Roughly $1.4 trillion. It got wider on the day the answer came, because AMD and Broadcom went up while Nvidia went down.
I also showed four old cases where the stock jumped once the question was settled. Close to close, Nvidia fell 4.3%. That didn't hold. From the open it did jump, but nobody could buy the answer at the prior close.
What's next
Earnings on Tuesday 17 Nov, after the close. First report with Kress as interim CEO.
The options market is charging for a move of about 9.5% either way by 18 Nov. I wrote that down on 13 Nov before the open, with the stock at $166.19. The downside line works out at $149.20. Thursday's low was $148.80. Basically the same level.
A closed-door House hearing with Huang is also expected. No date is set yet as far as I can find.
Where I am
I don't hold Nvidia. I hold long-dated calls on Broadcom, which went up on the day. I didn't trade any of this.
If you sold Nvidia at the open on Thursday, what made you pick that minute? I'm asking for real. I don't have a good rule for it myself.
Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom open, low, close and volume from Tiger daily bars. Minute-by-minute prices and the volume split from yfinance 1-minute bars. The eight older cases from yfinance daily bars. Option prices from the Tiger chain, bid-ask midpoint, taken 13 Nov. Company facts from Nvidia's 12 Nov release. The gap against rivals uses the 6 Oct close as the start, same as K28. Everything else is my own arithmetic.
$NVDA$ $AMD$ $AVGO$
#NVDA #Nvidia #semiconductors #stockmarket #investing
Stop guessing. Start calculating.
Live to fight another day. đ¤
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