The Nasdaq climbed by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon after 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 reported gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In the realm of political predictions, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket has positioned Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, anticipates she will be the 47th president of the United States.
In the tech sector, Nvidia experienced a 4% increase in share value after reports from Reuters indicated the company is creating a new version of its Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia will collaborate with Inspur, a local distributor, to introduce the chip, which is tentatively named the “B20,” in China, with shipments expected to commence in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has refrained from commenting on this development.
Tesla’s stock rose nearly 5% ahead of its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is expected to discuss the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi. Musk indicated that Tesla will have functional humanoid robots for internal use by next year, with hopes of producing them for external companies by 2026.
On a less favorable note, CrowdStrike, following a significant global tech outage last Friday, continued to face challenges. The company announced that a substantial portion of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices were returning online. Despite this, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon’s stock dropped nearly 6% after releasing its quarterly earnings report, which showed the company missed revenue estimates due to customers holding onto their old phones longer than usual. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share (EPS) meeting expectations at $1.15 per share.