A recent study indicates that California’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers has not led to job losses. On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq index rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw positive movement, up 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political predictions, the crypto betting platform Polymarket favors Harris as the Democratic nominee, while PredictIt anticipates she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In the tech sector, Nvidia’s shares climbed 4% after reports that the company is developing a new version of its Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is said to be collaborating with local partner Inspur to roll out the chip, referred to as the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping by the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not provided comments on the matter.
Tesla’s stock increased nearly 5% in anticipation of its upcoming earnings report, during which Elon Musk is likely to address the delay in the company’s robotaxi rollout. Musk mentioned on social media that Tesla plans to have functional humanoid robots for internal use by next year, with hopes for broader deployment by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a major global tech outage last week, continues to deal with the aftermath. They reported that a significant portion of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices are back online. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13%, trading around $263 by Monday afternoon.
Verizon faced a nearly 6% drop in its stock following the release of its quarterly earnings report, which did not meet revenue expectations. The telecommunications company cited that customers are increasingly holding onto their old phones longer, impacting upgrade rates. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analyst expectation of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share (EPS) of $1.15 met forecasts.