The Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Conversely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 saw smaller gains, adding 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
Polymarket, a crypto-based betting platform, currently supports Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, anticipates she will become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia’s stock rose by 4% after reports surfaced regarding its development of a new version of its Blackwell AI chips tailored for the Chinese market. The chipmaker is expected to collaborate with local partner Inspur to launch and distribute a chip, provisionally named the “B20,” in China, anticipated to ship by the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not commented on the matter.
Tesla’s shares jumped nearly 5% on the eve of its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to provide details on the company’s delayed robotaxi release. Musk stated via social media that Tesla would have small-scale production of humanoid robots for internal purposes by next year, with hopes for widespread production by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm implicated in last week’s significant global tech outage, is slowly regaining stability after the incident. The company reported that a substantial number of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices are online and operational again. However, CrowdStrike’s stock plummeted over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon experienced a significant drop of nearly 6% after releasing its quarterly earnings report, which missed revenue expectations. The company attributed this setback to customers retaining their old phones longer, which negatively affected upgrade rates tied to promotional plans. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share remaining in line at $1.15.