A Single Sentence Worth $60 Billion! US Retail Investors Debate: Follow Jensen Huang or Trump?

A single sentence from NVIDIA's CEO created $60 billion in market value out of thin air. But as the market becomes increasingly accustomed to trading based on celebrity endorsements, anger and confusion among retail investors are spreading across Reddit forums.

Wallstreetcn mentioned that on Tuesday at Computex, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang publicly stated that chipmaker Marvell is destined to become a company with a trillion-dollar market capitalization.

This remark immediately ignited the US stock market that day. Marvell's stock price soared more than 32% in a single day, marking its largest one-day gain in three years. Its market capitalization jumped from approximately $192 billion on Monday to over $254 billion, creating more than $60 billion in wealth out of thin air with just one sentence.

Ordinary investors may have no concept of Marvell Technology's balance sheet, cash flow, or price-to-earnings ratio, and some may have never even heard of the company.

But if someone had known in advance that Marvell CEO Matt Murphy would be sharing the stage with Jensen Huang, whose NVIDIA is the world's most valuable company and the core symbol of the current AI wave,

then the mere expectation that "the two would speak highly of each other" would have been sufficient reason to buy. Marvell had already accumulated a 158% gain in the preceding months.

Analysts point out that in the current euphoric market environment where "stocks hardly ever fall," stock prices are often driven by casual remarks, vague expectations, and even speculation itself.

Reddit Retail Investors' Anger: Are the Rules Fair?

The surge in Marvell caused an uproar on r/wallstreetbets, a Reddit forum popular with retail investors.

Comments such as "This market is crazy" and "This isn't fair" flooded in, with the core grievance being that Jensen Huang created hundreds of billions in wealth in an instant with just one sentence, while ordinary investors lacked information advantages and could not position themselves in advance.

Some traders on the same forum had previously bet that uninformed retail investors would mistakenly buy Virgin Galactic (stock code: SPCE) thinking it was SpaceX (future code: SPCX), profiting from the confusion.

This behavior of arbitraging information asymmetry is seen by some market observers as a microcosm of the current market ecosystem.

And when the protagonist of the "celebrity effect" switches to the US President, the intensity of this trust crisis is magnified manifold.

Trump's Actions Spark More Controversy: Self-Promotion, Retail Investors Left Holding the Bag?

Similar "celebrity effects" are not limited to the tech sector. US President Trump has recently publicly praised stocks in his personal portfolio multiple times, triggering strong market reactions and raising deeper questions about fairness.

At the end of last month, Trump publicly praised chipmaker Micron Tech, in which he holds shares. As a result, Micron Tech's stock price rose more than 25% in just over a week.

Notably, Micron Tech's stock price had doubled in the two months prior, a period that coincided closely with Trump's significant purchases of the stock in the first quarter.

For ordinary investors hoping to wait for a better entry point, the cost of entering the market after Trump's comments had increased substantially.

Earlier, Trump had also publicly recommended Dell Tech multiple times, when he already held millions of dollars worth of Dell stock.

In February this year, his first call to "go buy a Dell computer" received a lukewarm market response; but his second public statement on May 8 caused Dell Tech's stock price to jump 13% in a single day, hitting a record high.

Since then, Dell Tech's stock price has risen another approximately 72%, partly because the company secured a $9.7 billion Pentagon contract a few weeks after Trump's "shout-out."

Wall Street Has Learned to "Copy Trade," Changing the Game for Retail Investors

The core contradiction in these events lies in the widening asymmetry gap between ordinary investors and those with information advantages.

Institutions and professional investors have long formed the habit of closely tracking "statements from Upper Management," while retail investors often only enter the market belatedly after the trend has started, facing higher costs and greater uncertainty.

This series of events has resonated on social media. A user on platform X joked:

I'm just sitting here waiting for Jensen Huang or Trump to mention a stock someday.

This half-joking, half-resigned remark reflects the increasingly passive position of ordinary investors in a market driven by the celebrity effect.

As Bloomberg columnist Mark Gongloff pointed out, ordinary investors read daily reports about the AI bubble potentially bursting at any moment, and the phenomenon of "celebrity stock pumping" only exacerbates their distrust of the market.

When the US President himself is one of the "pumpers" and also a beneficiary, the seriousness of the issue escalates further.