Nvidia beat forecasts 10 times in a row. The stock fell after 6. How big a beat does it need?

Short answer: about $113.8 billion, if the last 10 reports are a guide. Nvidia reports on November 17. Wall Street expects $109 billion of revenue. In Nvidia’s last 10 reports, a revenue beat of 4.4% or more came with a rise the next day 3 times out of 4. Smaller beats came with a rise only 1 time out of 6. The forecast for the next quarter, which investors usually talk about most, showed no pattern at all. Two warnings: ten reports is a tiny sample, and this time the stock goes into the report after a fall, which did not happen once in those ten.

Nvidia's revenue for the quarter it reports on November 17

Wall Street expects$109Baverage of 45 analysts (Yahoo Finance)

vs

The "go up" line$113.8Ba 4.4% beat, the size that came with 3 of 4 rises

Ten reports is a tiny sample. Read the line as a rule of thumb, not a law.

The streak

6 of 10reports after which the stock fell, although every one beat the forecasts

Average revenue beat

3.7%

Rose / fell

4 / 6

Revenue beat of 4.4% or more

3 of 4times the stock went up the next day

Beat under 4.4%

1 of 6 rose

Biggest beat

5.8%

Next-quarter forecast

No patterna bigger beat on the outlook did not mean a better day

Biggest (Feb '26)

+7.4%

Stock next day

−5.5%

Never seen before

−21.1%the stock's last 20 trading days before this report

Weakest run-in of the 10

+1.3%

All 10 before

went up

1. Always a beat, mostly a fall

Sources: daily closes from Yahoo Finance; consensus from LSEG as quoted by CNBC and Reuters. Our calculation.

Since May 2024, Nvidia has beaten the analysts’ revenue and profit forecasts every single quarter, by 3.7% of revenue on average. And yet the stock fell the next day 6 times out of 10. That is not as strange as it sounds. A forecast is what analysts write down. What moves the price is what investors already paid for. When everyone knows Nvidia will beat, a beat is the starting point, not the news.

So the real question is not whether Nvidia beats on November 17. It almost certainly will. The question is by how much, and whether that is more than investors already expect.

2. Revenue: the size of the beat mattered a little

Sources: LSEG consensus as quoted by CNBC and Reuters; daily closes from Yahoo Finance. Our calculation.

Put each report on a chart, with the size of the revenue beat across and the next day’s move up and down, and a rough line shows up at about 4.4%. Of the four reports at or above it, three came with a rise. Of the six below it, only one did: May 2025, when Nvidia had just lost about $8 billion of China sales to export rules, investors expected worse, and the stock had already gained 24% in the month before.

Two of the three big-beat rises also had something extra. In May 2024, Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 stock split together with the results. In August 2026, Jensen Huang said revenue could grow about 70% next fiscal year, while analysts had pencilled in 44%. A big beat helped, but it was rarely the only news.

3. The next-quarter forecast: no pattern at all

Sources: LSEG consensus as quoted by CNBC and Reuters; daily closes from Yahoo Finance. Our calculation.

With every report, Nvidia also says what it expects to sell the next quarter. You would think a big jump there matters most. In these ten reports, it did not. The biggest forecast beat, +7.4% in February 2026, was followed by a -5.5% day. The only time the forecast came in below what analysts wanted, in May 2025, the stock rose.

For November 17, Wall Street expects Nvidia to forecast about $124.7 billion for the quarter after. Going by the last ten reports, beating that number is no guarantee of a good day.

4. Try it: what would $113.8 billion look like?

Revenue for the quarter

$109B

Nvidia's own forecast: $108B. Wall Street: $109B. The average past beat would give $113B.

Beat vs Wall Street

Move the slider. At Wall Street’s $109 billion, the beat is zero. Nvidia has not been that close to the consensus in any of the last ten reports. At Nvidia’s average past beat, revenue would be about $113 billion, just under the line. To land in the group where the stock usually rose, revenue has to reach about $113.8 billion.

5. The part that has never happened before

The size of the beat was not the strongest pattern in the data. How the stock ran into the report was. In the four reports where Nvidia’s stock had risen most in the 20 trading days before, it rose three times after. In the four where it had risen least, it fell every time. In all ten, though, the stock went into the report up: the weakest run-in was +1.3%.

This time it goes in -21.1% over the last 20 trading days. That is outside everything in our data, and it can be read both ways:

• Bulls: after a fall like that, expectations are low. A normal beat could be enough this time.
• Bears: in the past, the weaker the run-in, the worse the next day. A falling stock has kept falling.

The ten reports cannot settle that. November 17 will.

6. The duel so far: 2 : 2

Our video put the case for and against Nvidia in four rounds before the report:

• Sales, point for the bulls. Revenue last quarter: $96.2 billion, more than double the $46.7 billion of a year earlier.
• Price, point for the bulls. About $11 for every dollar of profit analysts expect next year. Microsoft: about 22. Amazon: 24. Apple: 33.
• Customers, point for the bears. In the first half of this fiscal year, just three customers brought in 16%, 15% and 13% of Nvidia’s revenue: 44% together. If one of them slows down, Nvidia feels it.
• The boss, point for the bears. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into CEO Jensen Huang, and House committee chairs asked for a closed-door briefing. The board says it has “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised”, and Huang remains CEO.

The fifth round is November 17.

Nvidia NVDA

At publication

$178.67

Nov 9, 2026 close

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Now

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Source: Yahoo Finance daily closes. Live data refreshes on page load.

The price was frozen at the close on 2026-11-09, at $178.67. The live price loads every time the page opens. The record close was $239.24 on October 6.

My take: a beat is not the answer by itself, because Nvidia always beats. What mattered in the past was a beat big enough to surprise people who already expected one, about 4.4% on revenue, plus a reason to believe the growth keeps going. On November 17, watch the revenue line first: around $113.8 billion or more, history leans to a rise. Around $109 billion, it leans the other way. Where do you think it lands?

What the numbers leave out

• Ten reports is a tiny sample. The 4.4% line is where rises and falls happened to split in these ten reports, not a law. One more report on either side of it changes the score.
• One day is short. We measure from the close before the report to the next day’s close. A week later, the picture can look different.
• Other news on the same day. A stock split (May 2024), China export rules (May 2025) and Huang’s long-range forecast (August 2026) arrived with the results. We cannot separate them from the beat.
• Consensus differs by source. LSEG, FactSet, Yahoo Finance and others poll different analysts. Where CNBC did not give an LSEG number, we used the closest one (see Methodology). The difference is usually a few hundred million dollars, small next to the beats.
• Profit and margins. Nvidia’s profit per share also beat every time (Yahoo Finance data), so it cannot explain the difference between rises and falls. We did not test gross margin, which some investors watch closely.

Data

Download all 10 reports with revenue, forecast, consensus, profit per share and the stock’s move: nvidia-earnings-beats.csv.

Methodology

• Revenue and consensus: Nvidia’s revenue for each quarter, its forecast for the next quarter and the LSEG consensus for both, as quoted by CNBC on the day of each report: Aug 2024 (revenue; the forecast consensus of $31.77 billion is LSEG as quoted by Wccftech), Nov 2024, Feb 2025, May 2025, Aug 2025, Nov 2025, Feb 2026, May 2026, Aug 2026. May 2024: Reuters, via Business Standard (LSEG). Where Nvidia gave a range (“plus or minus 2%”), we use the middle.
• Beat: revenue ÷ consensus − 1. Forecast beat: Nvidia’s forecast for the next quarter ÷ the consensus for that quarter − 1.
• Stock move: close on the report day (Nvidia reports after the US market closes) to the next trading day’s close, from Yahoo Finance via yfinance (unadjusted closes; the 2024 stock split does not affect a one-day change). Run-in: change over the 20 trading days before the report day’s close. Correlations with the next-day move across the ten reports: revenue beat 0.27, forecast beat -0.14, run-in 0.66.
• The 4.4% line: the revenue beat that best splits the ten reports into rises and falls. $113.8 billion is $109 billion × (1 + 4.4%).
• November 17 consensus: average of 45 analysts on Yahoo Finance: $109 billion for the quarter Nvidia reports, $124.7 billion for the next one. Nvidia’s own forecast of $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, is from its August 26, 2026 results.
• Profit per share: estimate and reported figure for each report from the Yahoo Finance earnings calendar.
• The four rounds: revenue of $96.2 billion vs $46.7 billion a year earlier from CNBC (links above). Price per dollar of next year’s profit: forward P/E from Yahoo Finance on November 9, 2026. Customer concentration: Nvidia’s 10-Q for the quarter ended July 26, 2026, “Concentration of Revenue”. Investigation and briefing request: CNBC, November 8, 2026.
• Share prices: prices at publication were saved with yfinance; live prices come from a small server function that queries Yahoo Finance when the page loads.
• Code: plain Python scripts (collect.py, analyze.py, snapshot_stocks.py).
• Trademarks: company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. This site is independent and not affiliated with or sponsored by Nvidia or any other company mentioned.