Nvidia superfans hosted a party to watch the quarterly results

“Have some Nvidia beads!” Lauren Balik hands me the green plastic Mardi Gras necklace and – sure, why not? It's just before 4 p.m. in the Store House in Chelsea. A bunch of black, green and white balloons hit me in the face. Soap bubbles float through the air and seven screens hanging above the 30 or so people are broadcasting CNBC, who are here for one reason only: to see how much money Nvidia, the “most important stock on planet Earth,” has made in the last three months.

Nvidia is at the peak of its hype cycle. This year, the computer chip maker became something of a vehicle for all of capitalism's hopes and dreams as its market value surpassed $3 trillion and more than tripled in the past 12 months. Thanks to a quick tweet from Balik, finance and tech superfans are flocking to the bar to watch the quarterly results.

I have been involved in some form of Wall Street for 14 years, and this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a single company’s 10-Q filing has caused a group of people to don't even work there throw a party. “This is all really embarrassing!” says Takara Satone, 27, who tells me she works at a “big tech company.” Part of it is because of the power of financial memes and the stunning rise in Nvidia's share price over the past year, which has catapulted the company to the world's second-largest company by market capitalization after Apple. Most of the people I spoke to here owned stocks, and one had almost his entire life savings. But Nvidia has become something else – a feel-good story at a time when the economy is otherwise so unstable. “This is just the bubble in physical form,” says Howe Wang, an investor who blew up bubbles.

“I'm a believer,” said a Texas man who also works at “a major technology company” and wore an Nvidia T-shirt. He said he has invested in Nvidia since 2017 and that its stock has risen about 3,000 percent. On Monday, he used the proceeds to buy a studio apartment in Hudson Yards. He hopes to retire next year.

From left: Lauren Balik and her Nvidia-themed balloons. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York MagazineLooking forward to the third quarter figures. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York Magazine

From left: Lauren Balik and her Nvidia-themed balloons. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York MagazineLooking forward to the third quarter figures. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York… more
From left: Lauren Balik and her Nvidia-themed balloons. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York MagazineLooking forward to the third quarter figures. Photo: Kevin Dugan, New York Magazine