All eyes Wednesday will be focused on Nvidia when the tech behemoth reports earnings after the closing bell. The company is expected to report adjusted EPS of $1.76 on $78.86 billion in revenue. Options markets are pricing in move of roughly +/-6% in reaction, based on near-term contracts. But here's the thing: the more interesting trade may come Thursday when investors react to the results and outlook across the broader AI ecosystem. CNBC screened the S & P 500 for stocks that have historically reacted most strongly to Nvidia earnings reports, measuring both the consistency and magnitude of their excess returns relative to the broader market following Nvidia results. We compared each stock's excess return versus the S & P 500 on Nvidia earnings reaction days going back to 2016, then ranked the stocks based on their correlation and sensitivity to Nvidia's post-earnings move. We excluded companies that frequently report their own earnings the same day as the chip giant, which could distort the relationship. The findings showed many peers in the chip sector, but also some surprising companies a little farther away from Nvidia's direct orbit.. Advanced Micro Devices ranked among the stocks most closely tied to Nvidia over the period we looked at. Its beta of 0.28 suggests the stock generated about 0.28 percentage points in excess returns for each 1% move Nvidia made following earnings. Vertiv Holdings , Monolithic Power Systems and Micron Technology also ranked highly. Optics and connectivity-related names like Coherent and Lumentum also screened highly, reinforcing how Nvidia earnings have increasingly become a read-through for the broader AI infrastructure trade. Several semiconductor equipment and connectivity stocks also appeared near the top of the list including Broadcom , KLA Corp , Lam Research and NXP Semis . Outside of traditional chip stocks, mechanical and electrical contractor for data centers, Comfort Systems , also screened highly, reflecting growing investor focus on the "picks and shovels" AI infrastructure trade. United Rentals , which rents equipment to build these data centers, also shows a high correlation. Super Micro showed the highest sensitivity to Nvidia earnings moves in the screen, though with somewhat lower consistency than some of the larger semiconductor names.
