Medicare patients may benefit significantly from a projected $1.5 billion in savings on ten prescription drugs.
In market updates, the Nasdaq experienced a rise of 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon. This increase followed President Joe Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. Concurrently, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 saw gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In related news, the betting platform Polymarket has listed Harris as the likely Democratic nominee, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts she might become the 47th president of the United States.
In technology markets, Nvidia’s stock climbed 4% following reports that it is creating a new version of its Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. The company is collaborating with local distributor Inspur to introduce the chip, referred to as the “B20,” anticipated to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not provided further comments on this development.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock surged nearly 5% on the eve of its earnings announcement, with CEO Elon Musk expected to discuss the much-anticipated robotaxi project. On social media platform X, Musk shared that Tesla plans to have useful humanoid robots in limited production for internal purposes by next year, with hopes for higher production for external sales by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a significant global tech outage last Friday, is gradually recovering. In a statement on X, the company noted that many of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices are now back online. Despite this, CrowdStrike’s stock was down over 13% in afternoon trading, hovering around $263.
Verizon faced a nearly 6% decline in its stock price following the release of its quarterly earnings report, which disappointed investors due to lower-than-expected revenue. Customers are reportedly holding onto their existing phones longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, just shy of analysts’ expectations of $33.06 billion, while earnings per share matched estimates at $1.15.