Nvidia Earnings Put Downside Risk in Focus

The S&P 500 fell about 1.5% this week, and the Nasdaq roughly 2.5%, giving back much of the post-earnings rally in the mega-cap names. This week brings Nvidia’s results, and what stands out is how closely the technicals and the options positioning in the name overlap.

On the technical chart, $230 has been clear resistance, $212 clear support, and below $210 there is not much until around $190. The options market explains why. Nvidia is in a positive gamma regime, with the call wall at $230, the put wall at $190, and the flip level around $214, which roughly coincides with the $212 support. At this point, the technical chart is really just reflecting the options market.

In this regime, dealer hedging pushes back against rallies and may buy dips, supporting the stock. What matters is how close spot sits to the flip zone. If the stock gets too far below it, say under $210, gamma could turn negative and hedging flows would become directional, meaning a post-earnings decline could see market makers push the stock toward the put wall around $190, and more volatility. The gamma profile shows resistance at $220, $225, $230, and even $240, while on the put side there is little until $190 and then $185, with a gap to fill around $180 below that.

So the charts suggest limited upside and asymmetric downside risk. The delta picture says the same: a lot of positive delta has been built up above the $220 strike, and calls outnumber puts by a wide margin. Once the company reports and implied volatility falls, if the stock cannot get above those upper gamma levels, that delta will lose premium and decay quickly, and it could become for sale, helping push the stock lower.

A beat would not be a surprise given Nvidia’s history. This quarter the options market is looking for about six percent, a move the stock has exceeded only once recently, back in its fiscal fourth quarter of 2025. So anyone looking for big upside through options may not get rewarded here.

My view is that this is an asymmetric setup: the stock probably does not get high enough to reward the call buyers, and because we are so close to the flip zone, there is a chance it slips into negative gamma and trades toward $190. It need not happen in the first twenty-four hours; by Friday’s expiration the stock could be at lower levels. That matters for the Nasdaq, where support sits around 28,900, the July support level, and for the S&P 500, where 7,600 has been an important level.

Rates keep moving higher. Thirty-year yields rose about one and a half basis points this week despite Treasury Secretary Bessent’s attempt to calm the market by talking up buybacks, which I suspect reflected poor liquidity in the long end. The ten-year made its highest weekly close since January 2025, the two-year is rising too, and the same is happening in Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, and the UK. With that global pressure on rates, I think it will be very hard for the Treasury to contain the long end by raising buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion; that is borrowing more at the front to shore up the back end, smoke and mirrors rather than quasi-QE, and I doubt it caps rates.

The dollar has come back, bouncing right at the 78.6 percent retracement, and it is hard to say whether that is a sustained reversal or just a retracement. If rates move up more dramatically and the Fed starts signaling hikes, the dollar probably strengthens; if the Fed sits on its hands, the long end likely rises further, and the dollar keeps weakening.

-Mike

Michael Kramer publishes independent macro and options research read across 10+ platforms and by institutional desks.

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Glossary by Claude

Gamma regime: Whether dealers’ option hedging dampens price moves (positive gamma) or amplifies them (negative gamma); the flip level is the price where one turns into the other.
Call wall / put wall: The strikes holding the largest positive and negative gamma, which tend to act as resistance and support because of dealer hedging around them.
Delta: An option’s directional exposure; large positive delta built up in calls means dealers hold stock against those positions that can be sold as the calls lose value.
Expected move: The size of the move, up or down, that options prices imply for a stock through an event such as earnings.
Dispersion trade: A strategy that trades single-stock volatility against index volatility; its unwind tends to push implied correlations higher.
Implied correlation: The degree of co-movement among index members implied by options prices; rising correlation usually accompanies a weaker index.
Treasury buybacks: Treasury purchases of older, less-traded bonds, funded with new issuance, intended to improve liquidity in the long end of the curve.
Retracement level: A Fibonacci-based ratio, such as 78.6 percent, used to gauge how much of a prior move has been given back.

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