Nvidia stock retains the crown as 'retail king' despite lagging in 2026

Retail investors are sticking with a stock that has printed them money over the past several years, despite a lukewarm start to the year.

That stock is none other than AI chip darling Nvidia (NVDA).

Nvidia has seen $706 million in net retail inflows over the past five days, according to new data from Vanda Research. The inflows suggest retail investors continue to view Nvidia as a core holding in their portfolio.

“Nvidia remains the undisputed retail king,” Vanda Research opined.

Shares of the “Magnificent Seven” member are down 1.7% year to date, lagging the slight gain for the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC). The only two Magnificent Seven components that are higher in 2026 are Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN), with gains of 7% and 2.55%, respectively.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a well-received showing for his World Economic Forum debut on Wednesday.

Huang — sporting his trademark black leather coat — said he’s seeing a “boom” in trade jobs and six-figure salaries for those helping to build out AI infrastructure.

“Everyone should be able to make a great living,” Huang said. He added that he expects the current wave of AI will lead to the “largest infrastructure build-out in human history” involving trillions of dollars.

He also pushed back, again, on the notion of there being an AI bubble. He said the only reason AI bubble fears come about is because the investments are so large, but the opportunity is “really quite extraordinary.” Nvidia’s stock finished the day near the highs of the session, up 2.95%.

The next catalyst for Nvidia and its retail fans: quarterly earnings on Feb. 25.

Citi analyst Atif Malik is bullish on Nvidia into the report.

“Fundamentally, compute and networking demand for next generation reasoning models is accelerating and will likely drive upside for both Broadcom and Nvidia which we see as core AI holdings. Nvidia at CES talked about upside to data center demand and Taiwan Semiconductor bumped up its 2026 sales/capex growth last week,” Malik said.