On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq composite surged by 1.5%, gaining 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also rose, adding 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In the political sphere, the crypto betting platform Polymarket endorses Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, while the New Zealand-based PredictIt forecasts her as the potential 47th president of the United States.
In technology news, Nvidia shares rose by 4% after reports emerged that the company is creating a version of its new Blackwell AI chips targeted at the Chinese market. Nvidia is set to collaborate with a local distribution partner, Inspur, to launch the chip, preliminarily named the “B20,” in China, with shipments expected to start in the second quarter of 2025. The company did not provide comments on the report.
Tesla’s stock jumped nearly 5% ahead of its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi. Musk stated on social media that Tesla aims to have functional humanoid robots for internal use next year.
CrowdStrike is still facing repercussions from a significant global tech outage that occurred last Friday. The cybersecurity firm reported that a considerable number of the roughly 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are now back online. Nevertheless, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13%, trading around $263.
Verizon’s stock experienced a nearly 6% drop following the release of its quarterly earnings report, as the telecommunications company fell short of revenue expectations. The decline is attributed to consumers retaining their older phones longer, which has negatively affected the upgrade rates for telecom providers. Verizon reported second-quarter revenues of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ anticipated $33.06 billion, with earnings per share matching expectations at $1.15.