"Nvidia Still Has a Lot of Decks to Clear"

When the stock was up 9% in yesterday's after-hours trade our headline was "NVIDIA Spikes 9% on ? (NVDA)". We have some experience with this one, started pitching it at $21.00 in May 2015 and in May 2016 adding:

Before we go any further, our NVIDIA boilerplate:

We make very few calls on individual names on the blog but this one is special.
They are positioned to be the brains in autonomous vehicles, they will drive virtual reality should it ever catch on, the current businesses include gaming graphics, deep learning/artificial intelligence, and supercharging the world's fastest supercomputers including what will be the world's fastest at Oak Ridge next year.
Not just another pretty face.

Or food delivery app. That's me, quoting myself (NVIDIA Sets New All Time High On Pretty Good Numbers, "Sweeping Artificial Intelligence Adoption" (NVDA))

over the next hundred-or-so posts. That version is from November 2016. The point is, looking at the company's Q4 earnings report and at the market's reaction we at first thought we were missing something. Thirty minutes after the close the stock changed hands at $168.90, up 9.3%, which is why readers got the "...on ?" headline.

At the moment NVDA is at $157.14 up $2.61 (+1.69%) which makes more sense but still seems too high compared to the near-term prospects.
Here's more from the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 14:

Nvidia proved two things on Thursday afternoon: Things will get worse before they get better for the once-highflying chip maker, and dead cats really do bounce.

Nvidia’s fiscal fourth quarter turned out to be the company’s first revenue decline in five years—and its largest in more than 10. Revenue fell 24% year over year to $2.2 billion, which was in line with a warning the company issued last month. What was unclear ahead of the earnings was just how long the company’s current troubles will last. The answer is: a while longer. Nvidia projected revenue of $2.2 billion for the current quarter, a 31% drop on a year-over-year basis.

Investors, however, seized on the company’s full-year projection for sales to be “flat to down slightly.” Since Wall Street was projecting a drop of 5% for the year, the forecast qualified as good news. Or good enough for a stock that has shed nearly half the value of its peak in just over four months. Nvidia’s shares rose 8% following the report....MORE

We'll have more next week.

Just to make things interesting the chart has a double-bottom, double-top  channel forming: