On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq climbed 1.5%, gaining 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he is withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 also saw gains, adding 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
The crypto betting platform Polymarket has backed Harris as the Democratic nominee, while the New Zealand-based PredictIt forecasts that she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In corporate news, Nvidia’s shares rose by 4% after reports indicated that the company is developing its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is partnering with local distributor Inspur to launch the chip, referred to as the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping by the second quarter of 2025, though the company has refrained from further comment.
Tesla’s stock surged nearly 5% ahead of its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi. Musk stated on X that Tesla expects to see useful humanoid robots for internal use next year, with hopes of mass production by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike continues to deal with the repercussions of a significant global tech outage that occurred last week. The cybersecurity firm reported that a large number of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices are now back online. Despite this, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% on Monday, trading around $263.
Verizon experienced a significant drop of nearly 6% after issuing its quarterly earnings report. The telecommunications giant missed revenue estimates as a growing number of customers are holding on to their old phones longer, impacting upgrade rates. Verizon reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share matching expectations at $1.15.