NVIDIA stock more than doubles, to over $100 per share

A few hours ago I wrote about AMD's great success throughout 2016, but it has been both Team Red and Team Green that have exploded this year - with NVIDIA hitting a record high $100.21 per share (at the time of writing).

NVIDIA started the year with its shares at $32.37, but reached $45 or so at the time of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 unveiling in May. But it was on November 10 that NVIDIA stock skyrocketed from $67.77 per share, to $87.97 per share on November 11. Why? NVIDIA released their analyst-beating Q3 2016 results, riding the success of their GTX 10 series graphics cards, dominance in machine learning, AI, deep learning, and more.

And now, NVIDIA stock has reached a record $100.21 per share, with Evercore ISI's CJ Muse expecting NVIDIA shares to reach $120 soon, with machine learning "making more and more use of NVIDIA GPUs". NVIDIA has been pushing into the deep learning market for a couple of years now, unleashing their HBM2-powered Tesla P100 graphics card, powered by the Pascal architecture, during GTC 2016 earlier this year.

NVIDIA launched a massive enthusiast offensive this year with the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, offering unprecendented performance - absolutely nailing the high-end market. If you're a pro-gamer, or enthusiast who wants to hit 120/144/160/180/240Hz (yeah, there's a lot of high-end monitors out there) - you're going to go NVIDIA. There are not many high-end AMD Radeon graphics cards that can maintain 165FPS at 2560x1440 in games like Overwatch or Battlefield 1, which is where NVIDIA placed its bets.

We're not even up to the exciting part yet - with NVIDIA powering Nintendo's next-gen Switch console, due out in March 2017. This should see NVIDIA stock driven up even higher, and then in May - I'm expecting NVIDIA to better detail its Volta architecture. We should find out then if the company is pushing into HBM2, or a blend of GDDR5X products - teased with GDDR6 for 2018/2019.

Not only that, but we're to be greeted by even higher-end monitors next year with 1080p and 1440p panels reaching 240Hz - while 4K will finally step up to the 120Hz plate, and 3440x1440 - well, my resolution of excitement hits 190Hz in 2017. On top of that, HDR monitors and TVs will become more common place - so expect some deliciously beautiful, and expensive monitors to drool over in 2017.