The Nasdaq index climbed 1.5%, adding 277 points on Monday afternoon after President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and 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 the realm of political predictions, the crypto betting platform Polymarket supports Harris as the Democratic nominee for the presidency, while New Zealand-based PredictIt suggests she may become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia shares rose by 4% following reports from Reuters that the company is creating a version of its new Blackwell AI chips specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to partner with local distributor Inspur to launch the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025. The company has not provided any comments regarding this report.
Tesla’s stock experienced a nearly 5% increase a day prior to its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to address updates on the company’s postponed robotaxi launch. Musk stated on social media that Tesla aims to produce useful humanoid robots for internal purposes next year, with broader production for other firms expected by 2026.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm involved in a significant global tech outage last Friday, is slowly recovering from the incident. The company reported that a considerable portion of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices has begun to regain functionality. Despite this, CrowdStrike’s stock was down over 13% in the afternoon, trading at around $263.
Verizon’s stock dropped nearly 6% after it released its quarterly earnings report, which indicated that the company fell short of revenue expectations. The telecommunications giant reported second-quarter revenue of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share matched expectations at $1.15. The decline in revenue was attributed to customers maintaining their old phones for longer, adversely affecting upgrade rates for telecom companies.