Nasdaq experienced a 1.5% increase, adding 277 points on Monday afternoon. This rise followed President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race and his backing of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively, during the afternoon trading session.
Polymarket, a crypto-based betting platform, has started supporting Harris as the Democratic nominee, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts that she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In other news, Nvidia’s stock rose by 4% after reports emerged that the company is working on a version of its new Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia is collaborating with local distributor Inspur to introduce the chip, tentatively named “B20,” which is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not commented on these developments.
Tesla’s shares jumped nearly 5% a day before its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is expected to discuss updates on the company’s postponed robotaxi launch. Musk stated on X that Tesla will aim to produce functional humanoid robots for internal use next year and plans for broader production for other companies by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a significant global tech outage on Friday, is gradually recovering from the incident. The company announced that a considerable number of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are back online. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13%, trading around $263 on Monday afternoon.
Verizon faced a nearly 6% drop in its stock price after releasing its quarterly earnings report, which showed that the company fell short of revenue projections. Consumers are increasingly holding onto their old phones, leading to reduced upgrade rates for telecom providers. Verizon reported $32.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, slightly under analysts’ average expectation of $33.06 billion, with earnings per share matching expectations at $1.15.