$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$stock finished the day 12% higher, after rising through the afternoon to soar through the $300/share barrier and touching an all-time high of $313.64 (which marked an 18% gain at that time from yesterday's close).
Why? The stock was jumping from the open (even its lowest trade today was 2% higher) after a Wells Fargo note touted an upcoming product expansion and sharply hiked a price target to expect yet another 8% upside.
Nvidia launched an open beta last December of its Omniverse platform, an open virtual platform allowing creators to collaborate in real time on physically accurate simulations or 3D renderings. And Wells Fargo notes that next week at GTC 2021, the company is expected to officially launch general availability for Omniverse Enterprise, a subscription product starting at $9,000/year.
The bank figures the "metaverse" concept that $Meta Platforms (FB.US)$has been talking so much about actually offers a $10 billion incremental market opportunity for Nvidia in the coming five years. The company's Omniverse plays a role there, but it also expects Nvidia to benefit materially from the "significant compute needed to power the Metaverse; with AI assisted design and parallel computing at the forefront."
Nvidia mentions have also been on the rise on moomoo, an imperfect but interesting measure of how retail buyers are joining in on the more typical institutional frenzy.
With about $745 billion in market cap, Nvidia has moved to become the seventh-biggest member of the S&P 500. It's up 28% over the past month, up 79% in six months and has more than doubled year-to-date:
The move up today marked Nvidia's sixth straight session of gains.
Nvidia is set to report earnings in a couple of weeks, with consensus expectations for EPS of $1.08 (which would mark 48%-plus growth) on revenues of $6.81 billion (44% growth).