3 Factors Pushing NVIDIA Shares Lower

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares are slumping more than 3.5 percent Monday morning on a weak day for tech stocks.

Pacific Crest analysts were cautious on the stock ahead of Monday’s news. According to the firm, there are three primary reasons for the stock’s weakness:

• 1. There have been signs of excess inventory in the desktop graphics market.
• 2. The stock recently traded at multi-year highs.
• 3. The company’s recent guidance numbers weren’t particularly inspiring.

A large part of Monday’s move may simply be traders taking profits on a stock that has surged 24.8 percent since Election Day.

While Pacific Crest is cautious, other firms remain bullish on NVIDIA.

Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis recently upped his price target for the Buy-rated stock from $95 to $110. After a meeting with company management, Lipacis now anticipates the GPU Compute market will grow faster than originally anticipated.

Citi analyst Atif Malik sees artificial intelligence as the company’s biggest potential long-term growth market and expects strong data center growth from NVIDIA through 2018.

NVIDIA has been one the leaders in the tech space this year. Shares are now up 171.2 percent compared to a 13.3 percent gain by the Technology SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLK).