Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone: options traders bet on October

Nvidia is on the verge of history. The chipmaker closed at a record $238.90 on Monday, October 5, and its market value now sits just below $5.7 trillion, reported by Investopedia. That leaves roughly four percent of upside between Jensen Huang's company and the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone nobody has ever reached: a six-trillion-dollar valuation. Options traders now think it could happen before the month ends.

Options traders are pricing in October

The timing is the interesting part. Options pricing now gives Nvidia about a 50 percent chance of crossing the mark by the end of October, and about a 67 percent chance by December 18, as reported by CNBC. The stock would need to touch roughly $248 to get there, and traders see about a one-in-eight chance of it happening this week. Crossing that line would make the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone the first corporate valuation ever to start with a six.

Morgan Stanley restored Nvidia to its top semiconductor pick on Friday with a $300 price target, according to market reporting. The call followed a September 28 move to add $150 billion to the share buyback authorization, taking the total to $235 billion. Buybacks on that scale are a public statement that management believes the stock is worth owning at these prices, and they bring the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone closer with every record close.

One stock now moves your index fund

Here is why this matters beyond the ticker. Nvidia now accounts for 13 percent of the Nasdaq and 8 percent of the S&P 500, according to market data, which means any index fund or retirement account tracking those benchmarks rises and falls with this one company. The Nasdaq closed at a record on Monday, and the S&P 500 sits less than 1 percent from its own high, so the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone is effectively the story of the whole market right now. Index investors own it whether they chose it or not.

The run has an odd backdrop. A soft September payrolls report, just 29,000 jobs added against expectations of 90,000, cooled bets on another Federal Reserve rate hike this month and gave growth stocks room to climb. AI enthusiasm got another push from a recent meeting between the president and top technology executives, which lifted investor optimism across the chip sector. Even the bond market has not stopped the rally: the 10-year Treasury yield is sitting at a 24-year high, and Nvidia climbed anyway.

What could still go wrong

Records attract doubters. Apple briefly crossed $5 trillion in July without ever closing above it, and Nvidia has seen its own records slip before, falling below $200 in June after its May peak. TSMC reports earnings on October 15, and its results will either confirm the AI spending boom or raise fresh questions about it. A lawsuit over the $20 billion Groq licensing deal adds a legal distraction, and analysts warn the stock now depends on AI orders growing faster than its own price. Chasing the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone has paid off so far this year, but the higher the valuation climbs, the less room there is for disappointment.

Asset managers are reading the same signals. Ben Emons of Highline Asset Management called the buyback announcement a capital-allocation event that asserts confidence in long-run AI demand, in a note to clients last week, as reported in CNBC's markets coverage. That framing matters because buybacks shrink the share count over time, so each new record close does more work toward the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone than the last one did.

For young investors watching from the sidelines, the lesson is the concentration itself. A single company has become the swing vote in every index portfolio, and the options market believes that swing vote is about to cross a number the stock market has not reached before. Whether it happens this month or next, the Tuesday market briefing and Reuters' market analysis both land on the same takeaway: the Nvidia trillion-dollar milestone is no longer a fantasy scenario, and the market is already betting on it.