Would you buy, or stay out?

NVIDIA designs the graphics chips that power PC gaming, and increasingly the processors behind data centers and early artificial-intelligence work. Its last full year was a record, but a 2018 boom in crypto-mining demand has just gone bust, leaving stores and distributors stuffed with unsold gaming cards. The stock has fallen by nearly half from its autumn high, and management has already warned the current quarter will be soft.

• •The core business is elite. NVIDIA's chips dominate high-end gaming, revenue grew 41% in its last full year to $9.7 billion, and even through October it was still up about 40%. Its data-center segment — the part that sells chips for AI — is smaller but growing fast. This is a highly profitable leader, not a broken company.
• •The problem is a demand air-pocket nobody can size yet. Last year's crypto-mining frenzy pulled forward GPU sales; now that mining has collapsed, the channel is clogged with unsold cards and NVIDIA has already warned the current quarter will disappoint. How deep the hangover runs, and for how long, is the open question.
• •The crash has made it look cheap. Down about 48% from October, the stock trades near 20 times trailing earnings — a bargain for a company growing this fast, if the earnings hold. The whole bet comes down to one unknown: is the crypto slump a brief air-pocket, or the start of a real downturn that guts the numbers you are relying on?