Nvidia – which now makes up roughly 7% of the S&P 500 – is set to deliver its fourth-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday. And while the big revenue and profit numbers will make the headlines, investors will be listening just as closely for hints about the outlook for 2026 and even 2027. After all, investing is less about what’s just happened and more about what happens next.

Wall Street expects Nvidia to post $65.7 billion in revenue – an impressive 67% jump from a year ago. It’s predicting an improvement in margins, too, with earnings per share forecast to rise 71% to $1.52. That said, the chipmaker’s made a habit of blowing past estimates – the last time it actually fell short was back in 2022, before ChatGPT kicked off the generative AI wave.

This time is likely to be no different. Signals from Nvidia’s supply chain – including chipmaking behemoth TSMC – have been strong, and its biggest customers, the “magnificent” hyperscale’s, have continued increasing their AI spending plans. The more Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft pour into AI infrastructure, the more Nvidia stands to gain as the go-to supplier of high-performance, specialized chips.

What’s particularly interesting is that despite all that spending, Nvidia's share price has gone almost nowhere over the past six months. In fact, Morgan Stanley now estimates that the chipmaker is the most under owned US large-cap tech stock relative to its S&P weighting, suggesting that lots of institutional investors are actually expecting it to trail the index.

Those big-cap fund managers haven’t had an easy time in recent years: the vast majority of them have underperformed the S&P 500. And if Nvidia does rally on another tip-top update, that low-cost index-tracking ETF could once again end up looking like the smarter bet.