The Nasdaq index climbed by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw increases, rising by 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In a related development, the crypto betting platform Polymarket has started backing Harris as the Democratic nominee, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts that she will become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia’s shares surged by 4% after a report from Reuters indicating that the company is working on a version of its Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia is expected to collaborate with local distribution partner Inspur to launch the chip, provisionally named the “B20,” with shipping anticipated to start in the second quarter of 2025. However, Nvidia has refrained from making any official comments about this development.
Tesla’s stock also saw a significant boost, climbing nearly 5% a day before its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is expected to provide updates on the long-anticipated robotaxi release. Musk stated on social media that Tesla plans to have useful humanoid robots in limited production for internal use by next year and hopes to achieve high production for external companies by 2026.
On a less favorable note, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a recent global tech outage, is still facing challenges from the incident. The company reported that of the roughly 8.5 million affected Windows devices, a substantial number have since returned to operation. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Lastly, Verizon’s stock dropped nearly 6% following the release of its quarterly earnings report. The telecommunications company fell short of revenue expectations, attributed to a trend of customers keeping their phones longer, which has adversely affected upgrade rates. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue was $32.8 billion, slightly below analyst predictions of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share remained steady at $1.15.