On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq composite rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points, after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. In the same timeframe, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 experienced increases of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
The betting platform Polymarket predicts Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt forecasts she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In the tech sector, Nvidia’s shares climbed by 4% following a report that the company is planning to develop a variant of its Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia is teaming up with local distributor Inspur to roll out the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” which is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia did not provide a comment on this development.
Tesla’s stock surged nearly 5% ahead of its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to share updates about the long-awaited robotaxi project. Musk indicated via social media that Tesla plans to produce humanoid robots for internal use next year and hopes to achieve mass production for external clients by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike continues to deal with the aftermath of a significant global tech outage caused by the company. After impacting roughly 8.5 million Windows devices, CrowdStrike reported that many of these devices are now back online and functioning. However, the company’s stock was down over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon’s stock dropped nearly 6% after announcing its quarterly earnings, which fell short of revenue estimates as more customers opted to retain their old phones longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue reached $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, while earnings per share amounted to $1.15, which met expectations.