Medicare patients are poised to save $1.5 billion on ten prescription drugs as part of new initiatives.
On the stock market front, the Nasdaq experienced a notable rise of 1.5%, adding 277 points on Monday afternoon. This increase followed President Joe Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race on Sunday, alongside his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains, with increases of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political betting, the crypto-based platform Polymarket has declared Harris as the favored candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts her as the likely 47th president of the United States.
In tech news, Nvidia’s stocks jumped nearly 4% following reports that the company is preparing to develop a new version of its Blackwell AI chips tailored for the Chinese market. Nvidia aims to collaborate with local partner Inspur to introduce the chip, which is provisionally named “B20,” with shipments estimated to start in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia did not provide any comments regarding this development.
Tesla’s shares surged close to 5% in anticipation of its earnings report, which is expected to include an update from Elon Musk on the company’s delayed robotaxi project. On social media platform X, Musk stated that Tesla plans to have functional humanoid robots in low production for internal use next year, with hopes for higher production levels by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm associated with a recent major tech outage, is gradually returning to normal operations after impacts on approximately 8.5 million Windows devices, many of which are now online again. Despite the recovery, CrowdStrike’s stock was down over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon experienced a nearly 6% drop in its stock price following the release of its quarterly earnings report. The telecommunications giant reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below analysts’ expectations of $33.06 billion. Its earnings per share (EPS) met expectations at $1.15. This decline in revenue is attributed to customers holding onto their old phones longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates for companies offering promotional plans for new devices.