Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Told Investors in Seoul to "Buy at a Discount" During the Recent AI Stock Sell-Off. Here's Whether His Call Has Paid Off.

The artificial intelligence (AI) market was looking very shaky two months ago.

On May 14, after a record run-up in share price, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock had surpassed $235/share, giving the company a $5.7 trillion market cap. Then investors began to worry that the AI boom had gotten too far ahead of reality. Over the next few weeks, AI shares took a beating, with Nvidia's dropping 15%, and AI hyperscalers Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) each plunging 11%. (Not to brag, but I called it.)

That's when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave a piece of jaw-dropping advice to AI investors. Two months later, has his advice paid off?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Image source: Nvidia Corporation.

Huang's advice

Huang was in Seoul for a series of business meetings, including one in which he finalized a partnership with South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix to design next-generation AI memory chips.

Between meetings, the Nvidia CEO spoke to reporters, and he didn't mince words. Here's what he said about the AI boom: "We're at the beginning of it, and whatever happened to the stock market, you should be very happy because now you can buy at a discount. Everybody should be very excited."

In other words, Huang believed June 8 was a big opportunity to "buy the dip" in Nvidia and other AI stocks. Was he right?

Was he ever!

Read to the end

Indeed, if investors had taken Huang's advice and gone "all in" on Nvidia's stock on June 8, they would now be beating the market... barely. Nvidia's shares are up 5.1% since June 8, while the S&P 500 has only advanced by 4.3%, giving Huang a 0.8% lead. But that's not the whole story.

If you'd interpreted Huang's comments more broadly to refer to the entire AI industry and had instead purchased a basket of AI stocks that included equal parts Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and hyperscaler Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), you'd really be doing well. Microsoft stock is up 18.5% since June 8, while Amazon's has risen 11.1%, largely on the strength of their recent earnings reports. Only Alphabet has lagged the market, and is actually down 0.5% from June 8. However, your four-stock "AI basket" would have produced returns of 8.5%, about double the S&P 500's gain during the same period.

Of course, those would be the gains if you sold those stocks right now. But Huang wasn't talking about a two-month AI boom. He's looking years into the future and declaring that the recent, massive spending on AI is just the tip of the iceberg. He's predicting solid long-term gains for AI companies over years, not months.

Selling your AI stocks now while they're beating the market is certainly tempting. But if you believe Jensen Huang knows what he's talking about -- and I certainly do!-- holding on to those stocks for the long term is your best move.

John Bromels has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.