There's a classic scene in Gladiator where the crowd at the Colosseum is going absolutely wild, breathlessly waiting for the next blood spectacle. That's exactly where Wall Street is right now — glued to the screen, waiting for Jensen Huang to walk on stage and announce yet another insane quarter from Nvidia.

And look, the expectations aren't baseless. This isn't empty hype for once.

The Number the Market Wants to Hear

Analysts are expecting $66.2 billion in revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter, with adjusted earnings per share of $1.53. For context: a year ago, revenue was $39.3 billion. We're talking about 68% year-over-year growth.

This isn't a good quarter. It's the eleventh consecutive quarter with growth above 55%.

Someone show me another company on this planet with that kind of consistency on top of an already massive base. I'll wait.

Why Is This Happening? Simple: Everyone Needs Nvidia

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft — the hyperscaler quartet — all reported results recently and made the same promise: we're going to spend more, a lot more, on AI infrastructure.

The combined capex of these four companies in 2026 could approach $700 billion.

Seven hundred billion dollars.

And a massive chunk of that flows directly into Nvidia's pockets. The company controls the AI chip market with the force of a de facto monopoly. Its GPUs — those graphics cards that once powered Call of Duty sessions — are now the beating heart of the data centers training the large language models reshaping everything around us.

Nvidia's data center business is expected to grow 70% to $60.7 billion in this quarter alone. That's roughly 90% of the company's total revenue.

When a company finds the right product, at the right moment, for the right customer, no chart analysis can explain what happens next. It's pure fundamentals. It's Buffett with his arms wide open saying "I knew it."

The Detail CNBC Mentioned But the Market Will Ignore

Here's where it gets interesting. Where the shallow analysis ends and the real stuff begins.

Memory.

There's a global memory shortage because AI demand exploded and manufacturers simply can't keep up. Micron's business president literally said in January that demand "far exceeded our ability to supply."

For Nvidia, memory isn't a footnote — it's a critical component of AI systems. And when the cost of a key input rises, there are only two ways out: you pass it on to the customer, or you absorb it and watch your margin erode.

In the last earnings call, Nvidia guided for a 75% gross margin this quarter. Analysts at Cantor are expecting it to come in slightly above that.

But "slightly above" might not be enough for a market that has its bar set at the ceiling.

If the margin comes in below 75%, it won't matter that revenue hit an all-time record. The market will scream that the story is over, that Jensen lost control of costs, that the bubble finally popped.

That's the circus. And the circus is that predictable.

What Taleb Would Say About Buying Nvidia Right Now

Nassim Taleb has a concept he calls fragility — assets and systems that are destroyed by volatility. And then there's the opposite: antifragile — what actually grows from chaos.

Operationally, Nvidia is antifragile. The more the world bet on AI and generated uncertainty about who would win the race, the more money landed in the lap of the company selling the shovels during the gold rush.

But Nvidia's stock price? That's a different conversation entirely. Anyone who bought at the peak of euphoria needs a cast-iron stomach to ride out the corrections that follow any result that isn't absolutely flawless.

Skin in the game, as Taleb would say. Is the person telling you to buy actually putting their own money on the line — or are they just another suit giving advice with someone else's cash?

Nvidia reports after the close. The market will react. Someone will say it was incredible and someone else will say it's the beginning of the end.

The real question isn't what the results will be — it's what you do with the information after everyone already knows it.

Because by then, the money has already changed hands.