NVIDIA Just Printed $68 Billion. The Market Dropped It 4%. Here's What Everyone Is Missing.
Plus: The SaaS divide, why I'm not ashamed of ETFs, and the networking play nobody's talking about.
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It’s February 26th, and I just finished listening to Jensen Huang’s shortest earnings call in at least eight quarters. No presidential-length monologue this time. He was sharp, tight, and — I’m convinced — deliberately holding back.
One word for these earnings: remarkable.
$NVDA delivered $68 billion in quarterly revenue. Wall Street estimated $66 billion. That’s a $2 billion beat — and here’s the thing that fascinates me: he’s done this every single quarter for the last eight. Not once, not twice. Eight consecutive quarters of beating estimates by $1.5 to $2 billion. At some point, that’s not outperformance. That’s a system.
And the market? Down 4%.
I’ll be honest — I was disappointed. Not because it dropped, but because it didn’t drop enough. I wanted 10% so I could buy more.
The Numbers That Matter
Let me walk you through what actually happened, because the headline “NVIDIA drops after earnings” misses the entire story.
Revenue: $68 billion — up 73% year-on-year. That means this business grew by nearly three-quarters in twelve months. For context, that’s not a startup figure. This is a company with a $2.8 trillion market cap growing like it just found product-market fit.
Free cash flow: $35 billion — this is the number that blew me away. It’s nearly doubled from $16 billion. When a company generates $35 billion in free cash flow per quarter, the conversation about valuation changes completely. This isn’t speculative growth. This is a printing press.
Gross margin: 75.2% — and Colette, the CFO, promised to hold this through all of 2026. Let that sink in. This is a hardware company — a company that physically manufactures chips — running at a gross margin that matches SaaS companies like ServiceNow and approaches Adobe at 87%.
The only companies with higher gross margins? Visa and Mastercard at 85-90%. And those guys don’t manufacture anything — they process transactions on a piece of plastic. For a company shipping physical silicon, 75% is extraordinary.
Next quarter guidance: $78 billion. The estimate was $72 billion. Jensen isn’t just beating expectations — he’s stapling it to the wall. That’s a $6 billion beat baked into the guidance. Even if he misses and comes in at $74 billion, it’s still $6 billion more than this quarter.
Every three months, this thing compounds again.
The Networking Story Nobody’s Watching
Here’s where it gets interesting for me.
Networking revenue hit $11 billion this quarter. That’s 263% growth year-on-year. NVLink 76, Spectrum-X — these are names you’re going to hear more and more. And this matters because it connects directly to $CRDO (Credo Technology), which I own and which reports earnings on March 2nd.
Credo supplies copper networking infrastructure to the top four hyperscalers. They’ve been criticised for having only four or five clients. But when those clients are spending $700 billion in combined capex this year and networking is growing 263%, having four clients is not a weakness — it’s a focused position in the fastest-growing segment.
Credo already pre-announced revenue of $404-408 million, up from $320 million. That’s why the stock popped from $100 to $150 last month, and it’s why I’m watching Monday closely. The 272% revenue growth and 67.7% gross margin — for a company selling cables — tells me the infrastructure bottleneck is real and getting tighter.
Sovereign AI: The Next Wave Nobody’s Pricing In
One of the most underappreciated growth drivers Jensen touched on — and one I’ve been tracking for months — is Sovereign AI.
Once the Mag 7 finish building their data centers, who’s next? Countries.
Dubai. Norway. The UK. Japan. Singapore. Malaysia. And now Latin America — Brazil and Argentina are entering the conversation. These governments want their own AI compute on home soil. They don’t want to send sensitive national data to American servers. They want independent, sovereign infrastructure.
After countries? Universities. Stanford, MIT, Texas — they’re already building dedicated AI data centers. Then comes the rental market: countries with cheap energy (like Dubai) will rent compute to Africa, Eastern Europe, Turkey. India builds its own and rents to neighbouring countries.
This is an entirely new total addressable market that’s barely being discussed. And every single node in this expanding network needs NVIDIA silicon.
Why I’m Still Long-Term Bullish (But Short-Term Cautious)
Here’s my honest take: the VIX hasn’t climaxed yet.
The fundamentals are screaming. $68 billion, 73% growth, $35 billion free cash flow, 75% margins, $78 billion guidance. You can’t argue with these numbers. And yet stocks are dropping on strong earnings. That disconnect tells me the macro environment is still driving the bus.
Three risks I’m watching:
The yen carry trade — still unwinding, still creating pressure. No Fed rate cut in sight — the market wanted cuts and isn’t getting them. China deflation — the deflationary pressure out of China is real and hasn’t resolved.
Until these clear, I expect choppy waters. The growth thesis is intact. The road to get there is rocky. I’m in accumulation mode, not panic mode — but I’m honest that the short-term picture is bearish.
For $NVDA specifically, I think $175 comes before $200. We need external money flowing back into US markets — sovereign funds buying the S&P, the NASDAQ, the SMH — to push through resistance. The GTC conference on March 14-16 could be the next catalyst. Jensen is holding back, and I believe whatever he reveals there will be groundbreaking.
The SaaS Divide: $NOW vs $CRM
This quarter drew a sharp line between two SaaS names I track.
ServiceNow ($NOW) delivered strong earnings. 26% CAGR on my BuyTrigger system, up from 24% before the quarter. Client retention at 98%. The Anthropic partnership is real — and I’ll say this openly, Claude is rocking the entire AI universe right now. I picked up $NOW in the late 90s when it pulled back, and I haven’t lost a second of sleep. Rule of 45 is high. Operating margin strong. Bill McDermott authorised a $5 billion buyback. I think this is the SaaS name that breaks out.
Salesforce ($CRM) is a different story. Down 28% year-to-date. We’re barely into March. I’ve said it was cheap at $240, cheap at $220, cheap at $200 — and it keeps dropping. Now it’s sitting at $180 and I don’t know where the floor is.
The fundamentals aren’t terrible — 34% operating margin, $50 billion buyback authorised, Agent Force generating 19 trillion tokens (whatever that means in real terms). But here’s my concern: they’ve never reported whether they’re gaining or losing clients. If Agent Force is bringing in new business, show us. If it’s not — that’s the problem.
Salesforce needs to push their CAGR from 19% to 25% and show the market they’re back. Until that happens, the price action will keep punishing them. I said give it 6-9 months. The clock is ticking.
CoreWeave: Growth Is Real, Profitability Isn’t (Yet)
$CRWV reported strong revenue — $1.57 billion, up 110% year-on-year. Active power at 850 megawatt, contracted to 5 gigawatt by 2030. Backlog of $66 billion. The compute rental market is booming and CoreWeave is the enterprise Hertz for AI.
But they’re still at an EPS loss. And the market isn’t having it — down about 10% after earnings.
I don’t give CoreWeave a ValueTrigger rating because the EPS isn’t there yet. We know they’ll likely hit around $5 EPS within three years, but “likely” doesn’t pay the bills. They’re heavily debt-burdened, facing 12+ class action lawsuits, and planning $40 billion in capex for 2026.
The popular play right now is options — selling puts on $CRWV during volatility can net you 10% premium on a two-to-three week strike. I’ve done it before and got burned when the stock dropped from $120 to $100 in three weeks. It’s risky. Until that EPS figure turns green, I’m watching, not cheering.
No Shame in ETFs
I titled my Tuesday post “There’s No Shame Buying ETFs” — and I meant every word.
In the BuyTrigger Pyramid, ETFs sit in your staples layer. I called 2026 the year for growth stocks, and I still believe that. But this quarter has been volatile enough to exhaust people. I get DMs. I talk to members personally. People’s partners are making 10% year-to-date on ETFs while individual stock portfolios are getting hammered. That’s demoralising.
So I identified 11 ETFs that I’d recommend to a friend, my parents, or anyone who walked up and asked “where do I start?”
The numbers tell a clear story. Korean ETF (EWY)isup45EWY)isup45EWT) up 24%. Brazil ($EWZ) up 18%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is barely positive and NASDAQ is slightly negative.
Money is leaving the US and flowing to international markets with high productivity. Korea’s boom is driven by local investors going all-in — and I do mean all-in, including leverage and remortgages. My best friend in Korea is a hedge fund manager and he’s getting nervous about the leverage levels. Taiwan’s growth is more sustainable — Taiwanese investors don’t leverage the same way. Japan’s economy is improving despite the declining birth rate, and I think automation and robotics will be the sector that drives them forward.
If I had to pick ETFs for someone who just wanted balance and sleep — positions 7, 8, and 9 on my list: consumer staples, MSCI World Tracker
My motto stays the same: invest well, sleep well. If ETFs help you sleep, there’s zero shame in that.
The Engine Is Running. The Road Is Rough.
Let me bring it together.
AI earnings have delivered. $NVDA printed $68 billion and guided $78 billion. The networking segment is exploding at 263%. Sovereign AI is an entirely new market forming in real time. The capex cycle is not slowing — $700 billion from the top hyperscalers this year alone, with $194 billion flowing directly to NVIDIA.
But the macro picture is messy. Three risks — yen carry trade, no rate cuts, China deflation — are keeping the ceiling low. Growth stocks are getting punished despite strong fundamentals. The VIX hasn’t peaked. Short-term, I’m bearish. Long-term, I haven’t been this bullish in months.
For $CRDO, Monday’s earnings will tell us whether the networking thesis translates beyond NVIDIA’s own numbers. For $NOW, I’m holding with conviction. For $CRM, I’m watching the clock. For $CRWV, I need to see green on the EPS line. And for ETFs, I’m telling anyone who’ll listen — diversify, breathe, and give yourself permission to play defence.
This weekend, I’m updating every Rule of 40 score and every buyback figure in the system. A lot of companies announced buybacks this earnings season and nobody’s talking about it. Once I’ve processed the data, you’ll be the first to know.
Hang in there. The engine is running. The road is rough. But the destination hasn’t changed.
