Nvidia stock has been a long-term outperformer
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Chip stock Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is up 1.5% at $275.50 in early trading, moving higher after Needham analyst Rajvindra Gill lifted his price target to $350 from $325, and raised his fiscal 2019 earnings forecast to $7.89 per share. Gill believes the company's artificial intelligence data center platform, TensorRT Hyperscaler, will continue to take market share, adding the company is "uniquely positioned to capitalize on this next wave of computing."
Overall, Nvidia stock has been climbing higher on the charts, most recently touching a fresh record high of $285.22 on Sept. 4. Despite a brief pullback and Citron's big bear note, NVDA has a year-over-year lead north of 60%.
Analyst sentiment has been mostly optimistic toward Nvidia stock, with 19 of the 26 covering firms sporting "buy" or better recommendations. Plus, the security's average 12-month price target of $290.70 stands at a sharp premium to current levels and in all-time-high territory.
Looking toward options, the semiconductor name sports a Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.93, which ranks in the 31st percentile of its annual range. In other words, near-term options traders have not been more call-skewed in the past year toward NVDA.
Lastly, now seems to be an attractive time for near-term traders to target options. This is based on the security's Schaeffer's Volatility Index (SVI) of 28%, which sits just 5 percentage points from an annual bottom, indicating low volatility expectations are being priced into short-term contracts.