McDonald’s is now confronting its first legal action stemming from an E. coli outbreak linked to its Quarter Pounder burgers.
On the stock market, the Nasdaq rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race on Sunday and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. In addition, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 increased by 0.3% and 1.1% respectively during the afternoon.
In the betting world, the crypto-based platform Polymarket has backmarked Harris as the candidate likely to be the Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt from New Zealand forecasts her as a probable 47th president of the United States.
In tech news, Nvidia’s shares climbed by 4% after reports emerged that the company is working on a variant of its new Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Collaboration with local distributor Inspur is set for the release of the chip, tentatively called the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not issued a comment regarding this report.
Tesla’s stock price saw a nearly 5% increase the day before its earnings report, as Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the ongoing delays in the company’s robotaxi project. Musk noted on social media that Tesla plans to have genuinely useful humanoid robots available for internal use next year, with hopes for increased production for external companies by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a massive tech outage last Friday, has continued to deal with the aftermath. They reported that a substantial number of the 8.5 million affected Windows devices are becoming operational again, although CrowdStrike shares fell over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
In the telecommunications sector, Verizon experienced a nearly 6% drop in stock price following the release of its quarterly financial report. The company fell short of revenue expectations as many customers opted to keep their old phones longer, adversely affecting upgrade rates. Verizon reported a second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, just below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share (EPS) matching expectations at $1.15.