Nvidia Lags Behind Chip Sector as Institutional Money Flows Out

Nvidia (NVDA) stock is up just 15% in 2026 while the rest of the chip sector races ahead, and one flow signal helps explain why the market’s former leader is being left behind.

The split from the sector is the surface story. Beneath it, options bets, perpetual traders, and institutional flows are pulling in different directions, and only one of them resolves the puzzle.

Nvidia and the Semiconductor Index have moved in opposite directions on about half of all trading sessions over the past 50 days, near the highest rate since the 2022 bull market began. That frequency has more than quadrupled since the start of April.

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The performance gap is just as wide. The Nvidia stock price is up roughly 15% on the year, while Broadcom (AVGO) has gained about 20% and AMD has climbed far higher.

Through 2024 and 2025, Nvidia drove the sector and outran its peers. The rally has since broadened to include chips other than Nvidia’s, leaving one question open. If the sector is soaring without it, where is the money that used to favor Nvidia going?

The first place to look is the options market. The put-call ratio for Nvidia, which weights bearish put contracts against bullish call contracts, has tilted toward puts since the company’s last earnings report.

On earnings day, the volume ratio sat near 0.46 and the open interest ratio near 0.79. Those readings have since moved to about 0.45 and 0.85, with the open interest ratio climbing toward puts.

A higher open interest ratio means traders are adding downside bets or protection. The shift is small, yet it matches the performance lag and hints that conviction in Nvidia shares is fading.

Options point one way, but they are a single venue. Another market is betting the opposite, which deepens the puzzle rather than solving it.

On the perpetual futures platform Hyperliquid, the tokenized NVDA contract shows traders leaning long. The smart money and public-figure groups both hold net long positions, while the larger whale group sits net short, but only slightly.

That stance stands out against AMD and Broadcom on the same platform, where positioning skews more heavily short, at least across two cohorts, as opposed to NVDA’s whale-only cohort.

Even as it splits from the sector, Nvidia remains a favorite here.

Volatility helps explain the pull. Nvidia carries the highest 30-day annualized volatility among the megacap names at about 33%, second only to Tesla and well above the broad market.

Bigger swings attract traders who want to trade on movement, a common tendency on platforms like Hyperliquid.

Broadcom’s earnings on June 3 also kept the sector’s attention on Nvidia’s rivals. So the venues disagree. Options lean bearish, perpetual traders lean long, and neither settles the question on its own. One last signal breaks the tie.

That signal is the Chaikin Money Flow (CMF), an indicator that tracks institutional money flow into or out of a stock. Nvidia’s CMF has dropped back below zero.

A reading under zero points to net selling from institutions, the largest and slowest-moving money in the market. This is what the headline numbers hide. Over the past five days, Nvidia’s stock is up about 2%, yet the flow has turned negative beneath that flat price.

AMD’s CMF, on the other hand, is aggressively positive at press time.

The divergence ties the whole picture together. Institutions stepping back explains the lagging year-to-date return and the rising put interest, while the Hyperliquid longs look like shorter-term traders chasing volatility rather than a lasting bid.

The CMF is now testing a rising trendline drawn from early January. A break below it would deepen the outflow and confirm the sector has moved on without its leader.

A recovery back above the line and fresh inflows would show the selling was only a pause. For now, institutional flow is the signal explaining why the chip rally is soaring even as Nvidia stock lags.