On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq rose by 1.5%, adding 277 points, spurred by President Joe Biden’s recent withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 followed suit, gaining 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In predictive markets, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket has backed Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, while the New Zealand-based PredictIt forecasts her as the potential 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia saw its shares climb nearly 4% in the afternoon after reports indicated the company is working on a version of its new Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. The chipmaker is teaming up with local distributor Inspur for the launch of the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” which is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not commented on these developments.
Tesla’s stock jumped almost 5% one day before its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is expected to discuss the delay in the company’s robotaxi launch. Musk stated on social media that Tesla plans to have practical humanoid robots in low production for internal use by next year, with hopes for high production for other companies by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm linked to a significant global tech outage last week, is still managing the repercussions, although it reported that many of the 8.5 million affected Windows devices are coming back online. Following the incident, CrowdStrike shares dropped over 13% on Monday, trading at around $263.
Verizon experienced a nearly 6% decline in its stock following the release of its quarterly earnings report, which fell short of revenue expectations. The telecommunications company reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly missing the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion. Its earnings per share were in line with expectations at $1.15 per share.