Nvidia at 24x Forward PE: Is Megacap Tech Actually Cheap Right Now?

Here's a fun game: guess which megacap stocks are trading at a discount to their 10-year historical PE while the rest of the market melts down over Iran war headlines and a Fed that can't stop tinkering. If you said $NVDA, $GOOGL, and $META, congratulations, you've been watching The Traveling Trader on YouTube and you're probably insufferable at dinner parties.

The Traveling Trader laid out the case bluntly: $NVDA sits at 24x forward PE, $GOOGL at 23x, and $META at 19x, all below where these names have historically traded when growth was cooking. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 overall is at exactly 19x forward earnings, right on its 10-year average. The market isn't cheap, but it's not the bubble people keep insisting it is either. The channel also flagged that most S&P 500 stocks are currently sitting below their 200-day moving average, a level of breadth deterioration that has historically marked bottoms rather than tops. Howard Marks of Oaktree, speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum, added a note of caution: markets have been optimist-driven since October 2022 with the S&P more than doubling, and investors should build in some defense. Both points can be true at once.

Over on X, the chatter is a completely different movie. Retail traders are laser-focused on macro chaos: UN war crimes findings against the US in Iran, ocean container shipping rates potentially testing record highs, and a Fed that raised rates even as core CPI hit 2.4%, its lowest reading since March 2021. The VIX told a brief horror story this week, climbing from 15.84 on September 11 to 17.71 on September 16 before crashing back to 15.44 on September 17 after markets bounced hard. The NASDAQ led that bounce, up 1.69% on September 17 alone and adding another 0.39% on September 18. Bears had every excuse to press and didn't get the follow-through. That matters.

TheChartGuys noted on YouTube that semiconductors including $SMH are attempting to reclaim leadership with monthly higher lows forming, while financials and healthcare, which held the market together during the semi cooldown, are rotating out. If that rotation sticks, it's a meaningful signal that the risk-on crowd is coming back to the names that actually drive index returns.

• $NVDA: 24x forward PE with AI data center demand still structurally intact. The valuation argument here is genuinely interesting.
• $GOOGL: 23x forward PE. Ad revenue resilience plus cloud growth gives it two legs to stand on if the macro softens.
• $META: 19x forward PE, essentially at the S&P average. Reels monetization is still ramping. This is not a stretched valuation story.

The bear case isn't nothing: 10-year Treasury yields are still sitting near 4.94%, the Iran conflict is nowhere near resolved, and freight costs are up 205% according to Jeremiah Babe's channel, which is not great for any company that ships physical things. But if you're waiting for the all-clear signal to show up on your phone as a news alert, you've already missed the move.