NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): A Hedge Fund Favorite with Unmatched Potential

We recently published a list of 10 Best Stocks to Buy and Hold For The Next Decade.  In this article, we are going to take a look at where NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) stands against the other best stocks to buy and hold for the next decade.

Is Nuclear Energy Making a Comeback?

Nuclear plants continue to re-open, but the question stands, will the global supply be able to meet the ever-growing demand for clean energy? On October 1, Aniket Shah, Jefferies’ global head of sustainability and transition strategy, appeared in an interview on Yahoo Finance to discuss his stance on nuclear energy making a comeback amid the AI boom.

Shah shares that the nuclear energy boom is not surprising. Looking back, the United States signed significant partnerships to boost the supply of nuclear energy years ago, indicating that the value this sector holds is not unknown or recent.

He adds that the big tech companies are going to be primary catalysts and will influence the entire market. These companies will invest millions and billions in nuclear energy, making the transition easier for other companies to follow. According to Shah, some key investment areas would be small modular reactors and nuclear fusion.

Shah also acknowledged that the United States held a bipartisan view of the nuclear boom, explaining why regulations and acts in favor of nuclear energy are being passed at notoriously high speeds. While the building blocks of nuclear energy are coming together, Shah remains concerned over the execution. He highlights that the United States does not have enough skilled labor and resources to make the nuclear energy boom a reality and must work extremely hard to make it happen.

Nuclear Energy is Poised for Growth Amid AI Boom

One of the most opportunistic investment themes in 2024 is AI, the other is electrification, and both require a lot of power. The surge in power demand is in turn driving utility stocks. On October 4, Durgesh Chopra, Evercore ISI managing director, appeared in an interview on Yahoo Finance to discuss how utilities could benefit from AI-driven power demand.

Chopra highlights the biggest catalyst for companies like Vistra and Constellation Energy is data centers’ needs for a 24/7 source of clean energy. Therefore, nuclear companies must grab the opportunity and enter into long-term contracts to lock in future growth as soon as possible.

There are multiple projects in the pipeline in the United States, that add up to roughly 1.5 gigawatts of energy, positioning nuclear plants as the next big thing in energy. On the flip side, balancing supply and demand will be a key challenge for companies.

Despite the challenges, he believes that the market is well-positioned for growth in utilities. Utilities have not seen demand growth in the past decade, but things are finally changing for the sector. Overall, with inflation going down, the sector may experience significant tailwinds. Chopra also emphasized that growth in this sector will yield results in five to seven years.

Our Methodology

To come up with the 10 best stocks to buy and hold for the next decade, we sifted through multiple similar rankings and compiled an initial list of 20 stocks. We then ranked the top 10 based on their hedge fund sentiment at the end of Q2 2024.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

A close-up of a colorful high-end graphics card being plugged in to a gaming computer.

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 179

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the most influential stocks at the moment. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the most widely held stocks by hedge funds. Such can be attributed to its rapid advancements in technology and strategic partnerships. The company’s networking platform for AI, Spectrum X, is projected to become a multi-billion dollar entity in a year.

Moreover, the company just closed a deal with Salesforce allowing organizations to benefit from advanced AI and data capabilities. Two weeks ago, NVIDIA launched a new AI tool, Aerial, to optimize wireless networks that will meet the needs of the next generation on mobile, robots, autonomous vehicles, and 5G.

The company expects to log $32.5 billion in revenue in the fiscal third quarter of 2025. The revenue is likely to be driven by its growing Hopper architecture and sampling of its Blackwell chips. During the fiscal fourth quarter of 2025, the company will pace up the production of its Blackwell chips, hinting towards a successful financial year for NVIDIA.

Analysts are bullish on NVDA and their 12-month median price target of $150 points to a 13% upside from current levels. According to our Insider Monkey database, at the close of Q2 2024, 179 investors were bullish on NVDA, with total stakes amounting to $53.7 billion.

Ithaka Group’s Ithaka US Growth Strategy stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

“NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is the market leader in visual computing through the production of high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). The company targets four large and growing markets: Gaming, Professional Visualization, Data Center, and Automotive. NVIDIA’s products have the potential to lead and disrupt some of the most exciting areas of computing, including: data center acceleration, artifi cial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and autonomous driving. The reason for the stock’s appreciation in the quarter was twofold: First, the stock benefi ted from tremendous excitement surrounding the further development of generative AI and the likelihood this would necessitate the purchase of a large number of Nvidia’s products far into the future; Second, Nvidia posted another strong beat[1]and-raise quarter, where the company upped its F2Q25 revenue guidance above Street estimates, showcasing its dominant position in the buildout of today’s accelerated computing infrastructure.”

Overall, NVDA ranks 3rd among the 10 stocks to buy and hold for the next decade. While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NVDA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: $30 Trillion Opportunity: 15 Best Humanoid Robot Stocks to Buy According to Morgan Stanley and Jim Cramer Says NVIDIA ‘Has Become A Wasteland’.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.