How to Nvidia Stock (NVDA): Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

How to buy Nvidia stock

You can buy Nvidia shares through any standard brokerage account. If you don’t have one yet, open an account with one of our favorite low-cost brokers to get started.

1. Open a brokerage account: Choose a trusted, easy-to-use platform and complete the quick application.
2. Fund your account: Transfer money so you’re ready to invest.
3. Search for Nvidia: Enter the ticker symbol, "NVDA", into the search bar to bring up the stock's trading page.
4. Decide how many shares to buy: Consider your investment goals and how much of your portfolio you want to allocate to this stock.
5. Select order type: Choose between a market order to buy at the current price or a limit order to specify the maximum price you're willing to pay.
6. Submit your order: Confirm the details and submit your buy order.
7. Review your purchase: You did it! Check your portfolio to ensure your order was filled as expected and adjust your investment strategy accordingly.

Is Nvidia a good investment?

Here are some reasons you might consider investing in Nvidia stock:

• You want to invest in a company capitalizing on the long-term demand growth for computing power.
• You want to invest in a profitable and financially strong company.
• You use Nvidia's technology in gaming or computing applications.
• You like the company's investments in providing solutions for exciting growth sectors, like AI and autonomous vehicles.
• You believe Nvidia stock can outperform the S&P 500 over the long term.
• You think the company's accelerated computing strategy will drive profit growth in the coming years.
• You believe Nvidia can continue to be an innovator.
• You don't rely on dividend income and are content with the company's small payment.
• You understand Nvidia's stock could be volatile and might lose value.
• You want to invest in a founder-led company and believe that co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang can continue growing shareholder value.

What does Nvidia do?

Nvidia is best known for its GPUs, but the company is now a major force behind today’s AI technology. Its business breaks down into two main parts: computing & networking and graphics.

1. Computing & networking

The company's accelerated computing platforms help data centers manage the extraordinary computing demands of AI. According to the company, its data center solutions "can scale to tens of thousands of GPU-accelerated servers interconnected to function as a single giant computer."

This segment accounts for the lion's share of Nvidia's business, 88 % of revenue and more than 97% of operating income for fiscal 2025.

2. Graphics

The graphics segment comprises the GPUs provided for varying markets, including gaming, professional visualizations (workstations), and automotive. For fiscal 2026, these three markets represented 9%, 1.3%, and 1.2% of revenue, respectively.

While not as robust as the company's data center business, the gaming and automotive markets have represented some aspects of AI. Nvidia's GPUs, for example, are used in various types of autonomous vehicles.

Is Nvidia profitable?

Profit growth helps drive stock price appreciation over the longer term, making it an ideal area for beginning investors to focus on before buying shares of any company. Nvidia is spectacularly profitable.

The company generated more than $40 billion in revenue in its 2026 fiscal second quarter, up 56% year over year and 6% from the previous quarter. Their data center revenue is driving consistent results.

Nvidia produced almost $26 billion of net income in the quarter. That was up 52% year over year. The company's robust profit growth has been a major catalyst for its soaring stock price:

Nvidia also generates lots of cash. In its 2026 fiscal second quarter, the company produced $14.5 billion in cash from operations and $13.5 billion in free cash flow.

The cash flow gave it the funds to invest in continued innovation while returning money to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Even with the hefty cash returns, it ended the period with a cash-rich balance sheet.

Does Nvidia pay a dividend?

Nvidia initiated a dividend in 2012 and steadily increased its payout for the first several years after declaring its initial dividend. While the company had stopped raising its payout in more recent years, that came to an abrupt end in 2024 when it declared a monster 150% raise.

However, the company still offered a very low dividend yield in 2025 (0.024% compared to less than 1.5% for the S&P 500). Although Nvidia doesn't pay a big dividend, it returns significant cash to investors through share repurchases.

How to invest in Nvidia through ETFs

Instead of actively buying shares of Nvidia directly, you can passively invest in the technology company through a fund holding its shares. Nvidia is one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization and is a widely held stock.

Nvidia is in several stock market indexes, including the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite index. As a result, index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that benchmark their returns against those indexes hold Nvidia stock. According to ETF.com, 681 U.S. ETFs held 3.5 billion shares of Nvidia as of 2025. The ETFs with the most shares were:

Given its large market cap, Nvidia is among the top five holdings of the five largest ETFs by assets under management (AUM). The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO +0.35%) owns the most shares and has a meaningful portfolio weighting among the biggest ETFs. That makes it a solid option for investors seeking exposure to Nvidia.

Will Nvidia stock split?

Nvidia completed a 10-for-1 stock split in June 2024, one of several it has completed throughout its history:

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