By Keith Speights
Publication Date: 2026-01-20 10:40:00
There’s good news and bad news from Nvidia’s past stock crashes.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall. And no company in the world is bigger than Nvidia (NVDA 2.54%) right now – at least, based on market cap.
Over the last 10 years, Nvidia’s share price has skyrocketed by roughly 27,380%. But could the GPU stock be headed for a crash in 2026? Here’s what history says.
Image source: Nvidia.
Nvidia’s previous crashes
There isn’t a hard-and-fast definition of how much a stock must fall before the decline qualifies as a crash. However, I suspect most people would view a drop of 20% or more over a short period as a bona fide crash. Nvidia has had several of them in the past, including during the last 10 years, when its stock delivered a staggering 274x gain.
For example, Nvidia’s share price sank 30% between early April and early June in 2019. This sell-off was partly due to the company slashing its revenue guidance amid lower-than-expected sales in the data center and gaming markets.
Like most stocks, Nvidia crashed in the first quarter of 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between Feb. 19, 2020, and March 16, 2020, Nvidia’s shares plunged nearly 38% – a steeper decline than the S&P 500‘s (^GSPC 1.05%) sell-off of almost 30%.
Nvidia’s stock plummeted roughly 27% between July 8, 2024, and Aug. 7, 2024. Although investors welcomed the company’s 10-for-1 stock split in June 2024, the excitement quickly faded amid U.S. government restrictions on AI…
