Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) saw its shares soar more than 15% on Thursday following the chipmaker’s yet another blockbuster quarterly report and better-than-anticipated revenue guidance.
According to the financial data firm S3 Partners, this one-day gain cost short sellers roughly $2.9 billion.
NVDA stands as the most heavily shorted entity in the semiconductor sector, with short interest totaling $18.3 billion.
This places it third among the largest short positions in the U.S., trailing only behind Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) at $20.17 billion and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at $18.72 billion.
“Over the last thirty days we’ve seen Semiconductor sector short interest increase by $1.9 billion to $59.5 billion of total short interest,” S3 noted in a Thursday report.
“Today’s Semiconductor rally, driven by NVDA’s blowout earnings, has produced an AI generated nightmare for short sellers as they are down $4.3 billion in one day mark-to-market losses, down -7.26%. Nearly two-thirds of these losses were the $2.8 billion of losses for NVDA shorts,” it added.
For the month of February, those shorting the semiconductor sector have incurred losses of $7.2 billion, translating to a 12.00% decrease, and a year-to-date loss of $9.7 billion, or -16.8%.
This makes the Semiconductor industry the most negatively impacted sector in terms of short-selling performance for the year so far, S3 highlighted.
For comparison, the Interactive Media & Services sector is down $4.5 billion, while the Biotechnology and the Pharmaceutical sectors saw declines of $2.6 billion and $1.9 billion, respectively.