The Nasdaq rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race on Sunday and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 increased by 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
The crypto-based betting platform Polymarket has Harris favored as the Democratic nominee, while PredictIt from New Zealand forecasts her as likely to become the 47th president of the United States.
In market-related news, Nvidia shares climbed by 4% in afternoon trading after Reuters reported that the company is developing a variant of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia is set to collaborate with local partner Inspur to launch a chip currently dubbed the “B20,” which is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not provided any comments regarding these developments.
Tesla’s stock experienced a nearly 5% increase a day before its earnings report, during which Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the much-anticipated unveiling of the company’s robotaxi. Musk stated on X that “Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.”
On a different note, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm tied to a significant global tech outage last week, is still working to resolve issues arising from the situation. The company noted progress, stating that a substantial number of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are now back online. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% in afternoon trading, nearing $263.
Lastly, Verizon saw a steep decline of nearly 6% after its quarterly earnings report revealed it missed revenue forecasts. Customers are reportedly holding onto their old phones longer, impacting upgrade rates. The telecom giant reported a second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, with an earnings per share of $1.15, which met expectations.