Nvidia Is Closing In On A $6 Trillion Valuation. Options Traders See October As The Key Window.

Nvidia is moving closer to becoming the world's first $6 trillion company after its shares returned to record territory, with options pricing suggesting the milestone could come into reach before the end of October.

The chipmaker closed Friday at $233.95, up 1.3% on the day. Based on roughly 24.1 billion shares outstanding, that put Nvidia's market capitalization at about $5.65 trillion. The company's latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows 24.1 billion common shares outstanding as of Aug. 21. It is also climbing on Monday.

At that share count, Nvidia would need a stock price of roughly $249 to reach a $6 trillion valuation, about 6% above Friday's close. The calculation can shift as Nvidia repurchases shares or its outstanding share count otherwise changes.

Options traders are already assigning meaningful odds to such a move. An analysis published Monday by CNBC, based on market-maker pricing and the deltas of Nvidia options, put the probability of the company reaching a $6 trillion valuation by the end of October at about 50%.

The same analysis estimated roughly a 13% chance of Nvidia reaching the threshold this week and about a 67% probability of doing so by Dec. 18.

Those figures are derived from options deltas, which measure how much an option's price is expected to change in response to movement in the underlying stock. Delta is also commonly used as an approximate market-implied measure of the likelihood that an option will finish in the money, although it is not a literal forecast of where a stock will trade.

Current Nvidia options listings from Barchart show deltas and implied volatility across a wide range of expirations and strike prices, providing the data traders use to assess the range of moves being priced into the stock.

The analysis also found that options pricing assigned roughly a one-in-16 chance of Nvidia reaching a $7 trillion valuation by Nov. 20. Such a valuation would require the shares to trade near $290 using Nvidia's latest publicly reported share count.

Nvidia's latest rally has come shortly after the company expanded one of the largest stock repurchase programs in corporate history.

On Sept. 28, Nvidia said its board authorized an additional $150 billion for share repurchases, bringing the amount remaining under the program to $235 billion. The company said it expects to execute the remaining authorization through fiscal 2028.

The authorization followed another large round of shareholder returns earlier this year. Nvidia said in its fiscal second-quarter results that it returned approximately $26 billion to shareholders through repurchases and dividends during the quarter and had about $99 billion remaining under its repurchase authorization at the end of July.

The company's underlying business has also continued to expand rapidly as spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure remains elevated.

For its fiscal third quarter, Nvidia projected revenue of $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, while excluding any Data Center compute revenue from China from that outlook.

Nvidia's share count is also relevant to the valuation thresholds being watched in the options market. Its SEC filing listed 24.1 billion shares outstanding as of Aug. 21, meaning each roughly $4.15 increase in the stock price adds approximately $100 billion to its market capitalization, assuming the share count remains unchanged.