2 Reasons to Buy Nvidia Stock Hand Over Fist Before Thursday -- and 2 Reasons to Hold Off

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) will announce its third-quarter results after the market closes on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2025. It's probably fair to say that this is the most highly anticipated quarterly update remaining in 2024.

Some investors could be wondering if they should buy Nvidia before Thursday when the stock could soar if the company's Q3 results are great. Here are two reasons to do so -- and two reasons to hold off.

Reason to buy No. 1: A track record of beating expectations

Nvidia said in its Q2 update that it expects Q3 revenue of around $32.5 billion. Wall Street is a little more bullish. The average of the analysts surveyed by LSEG projects Q3 revenue of $33.07 billion.

Although Nvidia didn't provide earnings guidance for Q3, analysts look for the chipmaker to report adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.74. Even the most pessimistic analyst surveyed by LSEG thinks Nvidia's adjusted EPS will come in at $0.72, up 80% year over year.

One important reason why you might want to buy Nvidia stock hand over fist before Thursday is that the company could blow past all of these estimates. It definitely has a track record of beating expectations. Nvidia has topped Wall Street's earnings estimates for seven consecutive quarters.

Reason to buy No. 2: Good vibes from major customers and rivals

Sometimes, the quarterly reports from a company's customers and rivals can give insight into how the company is performing. Based on reading the tea leaves of two of Nvidia's major customers and one big rival, its Q3 update could be good.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) ranks as the biggest cloud services provider in the world. And it's one of the biggest customers of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs). In Amazon's Q3 earnings call on Oct. 31, CEO Andy Jassy said that AWS has "more demand that we could fulfill if we had even more capacity today." He added, "[I]t's really primarily chips that are the area where companies could use more supply." Jassy then segued by reiterating that Amazon has "a very deep partnership with Nvidia."

Microsoft is the second-largest cloud services provider. In the tech giant's fiscal 2025 Q1 call, CFO Amy Hood said that the demand for the company's Azure cloud platform "continues to be higher than our available capacity." CEO Satya Nadella played up Microsoft's relationship with Nvidia, noting that his company was the "first cloud to bring up Nvidia's Blackwell system with GB200-powered AI servers."

Then there's Advanced Micro Devices, a top competitor to Nvidia. Although AMD delivered disappointing Q4 guidance in its latest quarterly update, CEO Lisa Su stated, "At a high level, look, we feel very good about the market from everything that we see, talking to customers, there's significant investment in trying to build out the infrastructure required across all of the AI workloads."

All of these comments seem to bode well for Nvidia. There are no indications that the demand for its GPUs is waning. Instead, customers can't get their hands on enough chips and are continuing to expand their AI infrastructure.

Reason to hold off No. 1: Beating expectations might not be enough

Do I think Nvidia will top analysts' estimates with its Q3 results? Yes. Will it be enough to drive the stock higher? I'm not sure.

Importantly, Nvidia beat expectations with its Q2 results. The company even gave better-than-anticipated Q3 guidance. But its share price fell anyway.

Sometimes, Wall Street's official earnings estimates don't match what they really think a company will report. Missing these so-called "whisper" numbers can cause a stock to sink despite beating the official numbers.

Also, investors listen carefully to anything management says in the quarterly conference call that could raise a yellow flag. Nvidia's executives didn't completely allay concerns about the rumored delays of its new Blackwell GPUs in the Q2 call.

Reason to hold off No. 2: Potential Blackwell issues

And that brings us to the other key reason investors might want to hold off on buying Nvidia stock before Thursday. Technology industry news website The Information reported on Sunday that customers are having issues with Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs overheating servers. Nvidia gave a statement to Reuters that said "the engineering iterations are normal and expected." The company didn't sound overly concerned about the reported issues.

However, you can bet that analysts will ask quite a few questions in the Q3 call to try to determine how serious the overheating problems are. If Nvidia doesn't provide complete reassurance that there won't be any hiccups in Blackwell revenue, the stock could fall on Thursday.

What really matters

Whether or not Nvidia exceeds expectations with its Q3 results or talks about minor issues with its Blackwell chips, the stock could take a hit -- but only temporarily. What really matters is how Nvidia performs over the long run. Unless the problems with Blackwell are much worse than they seem at this point, this stock should still be one to buy for investors focused on the long term.

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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Keith Speights has positions in Amazon and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.