The Nasdaq experienced a boost of 1.5%, adding 277 points by Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw increases of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In the world of political betting, the crypto-based platform Polymarket has placed its support behind Harris for the Democratic nomination, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, is forecasting her to become the 47th president of the United States.
In automotive news, Nvidia’s stock jumped by 4% after reports emerged that the company is creating a version of its Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia is expected to partner with Inspur, a local distributor, to launch the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” which is set to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has yet to comment on the matter.
Tesla’s shares rose by nearly 5% just one day before its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the company’s delayed robotaxi release. Musk mentioned on X that Tesla plans to produce humanoid robots for internal use next year, with hopes for broader production by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm associated with last week’s significant global tech outage, is slowly but surely recovering from the incident. The company stated that a substantial number of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices are back online. Nonetheless, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon’s stock dropped nearly 6% after the company reported its quarterly earnings. The telecommunications provider missed revenue estimates as customers are choosing to retain their old phones for longer, which has negatively affected upgrade rates associated with new mobile phone plans. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly under the average analyst estimate of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share matched expectations at $1.15.