McDonald’s is now confronting its first lawsuit linked to the E. coli outbreak associated with its Quarter Pounder burgers. In the financial markets, the Nasdaq increased by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, in response to President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race the previous day, as he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political betting, the crypto-based platform Polymarket has put its support behind Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts that she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In the tech sector, Nvidia’s shares rose by 4% following a Reuters report stating the company is developing a version of its new Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia is expected to collaborate with local partner Inspur to launch the chip, which is tentatively named the “B20,” in China with plans for shipping starting in the second quarter of 2025. The company has not provided any official comments on the matter.
On the eve of its earnings report, Tesla’s stock saw a surge of nearly 5%. CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to announce updates regarding the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi during the report. Musk also revealed on X that Tesla aims to have functional humanoid robots for internal use by next year, with hopes of high production for external companies by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike is still recovering from the repercussions of a significant global tech outage that occurred on Friday. The cybersecurity firm reported that a substantial number of the 8.5 million Windows devices affected are now back online. However, CrowdStrike’s stock dropped over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading around $263.
Verizon experienced a sharp decline of nearly 6% after releasing its quarterly earnings report, which showed the company missed revenue estimates due to customers holding onto their old phones for longer. This shift negatively impacted upgrade rates for telecom firms offering promotional plans alongside new phone lines. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue reached $32.8 billion, slightly under the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share (EPS) stood at $1.15, aligning with expectations.