On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq climbed 1.5%, adding 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In the realm of political forecasts, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket has endorsed Harris as the likely Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt from New Zealand suggests she could be the 47th president of the United States.
In corporate news, Nvidia’s stock rose nearly 4% after reports indicated the company is crafting a version of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is expected to collaborate with local distributor Inspur on the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” which is anticipated to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025. The company has chosen not to comment on the reports.
Tesla saw a significant increase of nearly 5% in its shares ahead of its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the delay of the much-awaited robotaxi unveiling. Musk stated on social media that the company expects to have functional humanoid robots for internal use next year and hopes to scale up for external usage by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in last week’s major tech outage, is still working to resolve the effects of the incident. The company reported that a substantial number of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are now back online. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13%, trading around $263 in the afternoon.
Verizon experienced a sharp decline of nearly 6% after its quarterly earnings report revealed missed revenue expectations. The telecommunications company noted that customers are keeping their old phones longer, which has affected upgrade rates significantly. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, just shy of analysts’ average forecast of $33.06 billion, with an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.15, aligning with expectations.