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Nvidia traded $50 billion yesterday; that’s more than 15x what the UK’s entire FTSE 100 did in London

This is not a story about Nvidia.

8/29/25 7:36AM

Nvidia did just enough in its Q2 results this week to keep the AI train rolling. Some investors saw the slight data center miss as a concern; others — including most Wall Street analysts — were satisfied by the continued demand for Blackwell chips. The net result of those opposing arguments was that more than $50 billion changed hands in Nvidia yesterday, and the stock closed within 1% of where it was the day before.

$50 billion is a lot of money. It’s the most Nvidia has traded since May, and it was the most of any stock in the US yesterday. Such is the insatiable appetite for exposure to AI and the depth of the US capital markets that one stock can turnover $7.7 billion an hour, or more than $2 million per second, for an entire trading session.

Still waters run shallow

For British policymakers, it’s a timely reminder of just how sluggish the UK equity markets scene is: Nvidia turned over 15.6x what the entire flagship index of the UK’s stock market traded in London. Indeed, all 100 names in the FTSE 100 index traded the equivalent of only a paltry $3.2 billion on-exchange in London yesterday, per data from Bloomberg.

The hottest stock on London’s tape was British American Tobacco, which traded about $157 million, a little over two minutes’ worth of typical NVDA action.

OK, you might be saying, but Nvidia is Nvidia! It’s the AI golden goose. Perhaps more startling, then, is the fact that Nvidia was one of 16 US stocks to trade more than the entire FTSE 100. The final name on that list is MongoDB, which had a good day, rising 7%. But if a random database company — which most people probably haven’t heard of — is trading more than your entire flagship stock market index, you might have a problem.

Luke Kawa23m

AI energy plays soar on an explosion of call buying

Like their quantum computing counterparts, AI-linked energy plays are benefiting from an explosion of bullish options activity on Thursday.

Oklo is up double digits with call volumes above 106,000 as of 2:46 p.m. ET, more than double its 20-day average for a full session, with a put/call ratio of about 0.6. Call options with a strike price of $110 that expire this Friday (which are now in-the-money thanks to today’s surge) are seeing the most activity.
Nuscale, another nuclear energy play, seen nearly 140,000 call options change hands versus a 20-day average of 51,073.
And fuel cell company Bloom Energy has traded nearly 80,000 calls, roughly twice its 20-day average, with a put/call ratio of about 0.3.

During his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast released on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked up the potential for nuclear energy, saying, “In the next 6-7 years I think you are going to see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors.”

This adds to the evidence that the speculative bid is back in a big way after smaller stocks tied to the AI boom and quantum computing cratered from mid-October through most of November as credit risk began to seep into the AI trade.

Old electronic items tossed on ground for disposal, Hudson

Technology giants don’t look like they used to, as the asset-light era fades

Oracle and Meta are now some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the S&P 500, spending more than energy giants. I guess data really is the new oil?

David Crowther2h

Matt Phillips2h

Space stocks rip amid speculation on Altman joining race

Space stocks AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab all soared Thursday amid a recovery in the high-beta momentum class of shares coveted by some retail traders.

(High-beta momo stocks are basically shares that have been on a winning streak for a while, and tend to go up a lot more than the overall market on positive days. Goldman Sachs includes all three of the aforementioned space stocks in its themed basket of such shares.)

There’s little other fundamental news out there on the companies themselves.

But a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI impresario Sam Altman has been toying with the idea of entering the space industry, potentially standing up a rival to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, may also be contributing.

As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, sometimes these stocks seem to trade on a what’s-bad-for-the-Musk-empire-is-good-for-us-and-vice-versa vibe.

Matt Phillips4h

Intel sinks on news it will hang on to networking unit

Intel dropped in early trading Thursday after it disclosed plans to retain ownership of its networking unit following a strategic review of operations.

The unit, known as NEX, makes products like infrastructure processors, which do needed “housekeeping” tasks like running security checks, thereby freeing core Intel CPUs to do the higher-value operations. It also produces switches and controllers that manage and direct the flow of data to CPUs.

Intel Shelves Plans to Sell Networking Division After Review

Luke Kawa4h

Quantum computing stocks soar on return of bullish options bets

The calendar says December, but the price action is starting to look a lot more like September to me:

Quantum computing companies IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are all up at least 7% as of 11:04 a.m. ET, buoyed by a wave of bullish options activity.

Nearly 50,000 calls in IonQ have already changed hands, well above the 20-day average for a full session, with activity concentrated in strikes from $50 to $55 in contracts that expire between Friday and mid-January. Its put/call ratio is near 0.2, versus an average of over 1 for the past 20 sessions.
More than 65,000 calls have traded in Rigetti, a hair shy of its full 20-day average. Like IonQ, options activity has a bullish tilt, with a put/call ratio of about 0.7 versus a 20-day average of roughly 1.2.
D-Wave, which received positive commentary from Evercore ISI on Wednesday, isn’t seeing call activity as elevated as its peers, but the options action is also very skewed toward the bull side, with a put/call ratio of less than 0.3 versus a 20-session average of 0.7.

Pure-play quantum computing stocks nearly doubled from late August to late September amid heavy options market activity thanks to reports on government support for the sector, M&A activity, tech breakthroughs, and a flurry of price target hikes by Wall Street.