Jerome Powell’s upcoming remarks at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium hold the potential to significantly influence market conditions, according to strategists.
On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq rose by 1.5%, adding 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 also saw gains, increasing by 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
The crypto-based betting platform Polymarket currently supports Harris as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, while PredictIt predicts she will become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia shares climbed 4% after reports surfaced that the company is working on a version of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is set to partner with local distributor Inspur for the launch of the chip, preliminarily named “B20,” which is expected to start shipping by the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not commented on this development.
Tesla experienced a nearly 5% surge in stock prices ahead of its earnings report, which is anticipated to include updates from Elon Musk regarding the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi. Musk confirmed via social media that Tesla aims to have functional humanoid robots for internal purposes next year and hopes to reach high production for other companies by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in last Friday’s major global tech outage, is still healing from the repercussions. The company reported that a considerable number of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are now back online and operational. However, CrowdStrike’s stock was down over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon’s stock fell nearly 6% after the company released its quarterly earnings report, revealing that it missed revenue expectations. This decline is attributed to customers retaining their old phones for extended periods, negatively affecting upgrade rates for telecom firms that offer promotional plans with new devices. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue was $32.8 billion, slightly below analysts’ average forecast of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share were reported at $1.15, meeting expectations.