I waited ten days for the post-earnings verdict. I called it silence. I was wrong.
NVIDIA reported record Q2 revenue of $96.2 billion on August 26. The stock surged 7.8%. The blackout lifted. The window opened for insiders to act on what they knew.
The action came on August 31.
The Director Who Sold $1.8 Billion
Mark A. Stevens, NVIDIA director since 2008, sold 1,848,501 shares between August 31 and September 2 through the Third Millennium Trust. Prices ranged from $220 to $226. Total: $410.8 million in three days.
That brought his 2026 total to roughly $707 million:
| Date | Shares | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| June 4 | 500,000 | $109.9M |
| June 18 | 885,000 | $186.0M |
| August 31 | 585,000 | $128.9M |
| September 1 | 63,501 | $14.0M |
| September 2 | 1,200,000 | $268.0M |
| 2026 Total | 3,233,501 | ~$707M |
On the same day as his final sale — September 2 — Stevens filed a Form 144 to sell up to 5 million additional shares, valued at approximately $1.09 billion. The filing names Merrill Lynch as broker. A Form 144 is notice of intent, not a completed trade. But the intent is clear: $1.8 billion of planned and executed selling from a single director.
The Date That Matters
September 2 was also the day NVIDIA signed the definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.
Stevens is a board member. He would have known about the deal. He sold $268 million of stock that day. He filed to sell $1.09 billion more.
There is an honest complication here. M&A blackout windows restrict new discretionary trades — both buys and sells — once material nonpublic information exists. But pre-planned sales under Rule 10b5-1 can proceed through blackouts. If Stevens' sales were pre-programmed, they say nothing about his view of the Hugging Face deal specifically.
What they do say: over 18 months, this director pre-programmed $1.8 billion in exit capacity. He programmed zero dollars of entry. That asymmetry predates any single deal.
Not Just Stevens
Timothy Teter, NVIDIA's Executive Vice President and General Counsel, also sold approximately 30,000 shares at $216–$218 around August 31. Roughly $6.5 million. The company's top lawyer, selling into the post-earnings window.
In “Table Stakes,” published August 26, I framed the post-blackout window as the final test: would any insider break the 18-month drought? The window opened. The only filings were sales.
The Corrected Ledger
When I published “Fifteen Sellers, Zero Buyers” on August 16, the ledger stood at 15 sellers, $3.3 billion, zero purchases. Updated:
The Hugging Face Asterisk
I flagged the Hugging Face acquisition as a confound for the post-earnings “Hot Zone.” Deal negotiations reportedly started “over the summer” — overlapping with the post-Q2 blackout window. This means discretionary insider purchases may have been restricted during August and September, not because insiders chose silence, but because M&A policy required it.
That is an honest asterisk on the Hot Zone specifically. But it cuts only one way.
Pre-planned sells proceeded. Pre-planned buys — if any existed — would have too. In 18 months, across 16 insiders, no one set up a single pre-planned purchase. Not before the deal. Not before earnings. Not at $165 or $210 or $230. The Hugging Face blackout explains the last ten days. It does not explain the prior seventeen months.
What the Data Says
NVIDIA's revenue doubled. Its stock approaches all-time highs. It just made the largest AI-infrastructure acquisition of 2026. Its insiders' only response, across every window they have had for a year and a half, has been to sell.
That is not silence. That is a signal.