Morgan Stanley Bullish on Nvidia & Chip Giants: Price Targets Hiked Ahead of August Earnings Blowout
Wall Street's love affair with semiconductors just got steamier. Morgan Stanley slaps aggressive new price targets on Nvidia and peers as AI demand shows zero signs of cooling off.
The big guns are loading up
Analysts now see chip stocks as 'must-own' assets ahead of what could be a fireworks-filled earnings season. Never mind that pesky 200% run-up already this year—when has valuation ever stopped a good hype train?
Silicon rush 2.0
With data centers scrambling for GPU power and automakers stuffing chips into every dashboard crevice, the sector's pricing power looks bulletproof. At least until the next 'chip shortage' narrative gets trotted out to excuse missed projections.
The bottom line: When the suits at Morgan Stanley start waving the green flag this hard, retail investors might want to check their seatbelts. The August earnings rollercoaster is coming fast.
China shipments and AI hardware rollouts expand chipmaker outlook
Nvidia told investors earlier this month that it’s preparing to begin deliveries of its H20 GPUs to China “soon.” This comes after the company said in April that it WOULD take a $5.5 billion charge due to U.S. export restrictions limiting its sales in that region.
Moore acknowledged this in his analysis, saying the renewed activity in China, combined with strong AI demand from cloud customers, adds more tailwinds in the back half of the year.
The rally isn’t isolated to just Nvidia. Advanced Micro Devices, better known as AMD, has also been climbing. Year-to-date, AMD has advanced about 47%, outpacing Nvidia’s 31% gain. Moore, while maintaining an equal-weight rating on AMD, still pushed its price target higher from $121 to $185, implying about 4% more upside.
He wrote that AMD’s Mi350 chip cycle could also bring strong results in the months ahead. “The reinstatement of products for the China market has added a new tailwind for AMD/NVDA in the second half, but our enthusiasm is still centered around the level of demand from the core cloud customers,” Moore said. “We see Nvidia as the biggest winner of that spend, but AMD should also see upside.”
Other chip stocks were also in focus. Moore raised his price target on Broadcom from $270 to $338, keeping his overweight rating on that name too. He noted that most of the expected growth for Broadcom is coming from networking, not chip processors. Broadcom shares are already up 28% this year, benefiting from the broader AI build-out across infrastructure segments.
JPMorgan tracks Nvidia’s August earnings as major market catalyst
While Morgan Stanley is focused on the chip supply side, JPMorgan’s trading desk is eyeing Nvidia’s earnings as the next possible turning point for the stock market. The firm told clients it remains “tactically bullish” even after the S&P 500 climbed 30% from its April 7 low.
That rise pushed the index to record highs last week. But traders at JPMorgan said they’re watching August closely. “NVDA earnings may be a sell-the-news event, cueing the market to take a breather into seasonal weakness,” they wrote in a note on Monday.
JPMorgan listed several reasons for staying optimistic: strong economic data, growing corporate earnings, and signs that the U.S. trade war rhetoric may be cooling. Still, they cautioned that upcoming events could rattle sentiment. This week alone includes the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision on Wednesday, the July jobs report on Friday, and Donald Trump’s tariff deadline, also on Friday.
Want your project in front of crypto’s top minds? Feature it in our next industry report, where data meets impact.
