On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq Composite rose by 1.5%, adding 277 points, after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsed 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.
In related news, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket has indicated that Harris is the likely Democratic nominee for president, while the New Zealand-based PredictIt predicts she could be the 47th president of the United States.
In the technology sector, Nvidia’s shares surged by 4% following reports that the company is creating a version of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is set to partner with local distributor Inspur to launch and sell the chip, reportedly named the “B20,” projected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025.
Tesla’s stock experienced a notable surge of nearly 5% just one day before its earnings report is expected. During this report, CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to provide updates on the company’s delayed robotaxi release, stating that Tesla plans to have low production of humanoid robots for internal use next year and hopes for broader production by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm linked to the recent major global tech outage, is witnessing a gradual recovery from the incident. The company reported that a significant number of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are back online. Despite this progress, CrowdStrike’s stock fell by over 13% on Monday, trading around $263.
Verizon faced a significant setback as its stock dropped nearly 6% following the release of its quarterly earnings report. The telecommunications giant missed revenue expectations due to a trend where customers are holding onto their older phones longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, just shy of analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share meeting expectations at $1.15.