On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq index rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Concurrently, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 saw increases of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political betting, the crypto-based platform Polymarket favors Harris as the Democratic nominee for president, while PredictIt from New Zealand anticipates that she could become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia shares experienced a boost of 4% after reports emerged that the company is working on a version of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to partner with a local distributor, Inspur, to launch a chip tentatively named the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock surged nearly 5% ahead of its earnings report scheduled for the following day, where CEO Elon Musk is expected to discuss the company’s delayed robotaxi launch. Musk indicated on social media that Tesla will have functional humanoid robots in limited production for internal use by next year.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm linked to a significant global tech outage last Friday, is gradually recovering. The company reported that many of the approximately 8.5 million impacted Windows devices are back online, although its stock dropped over 13% to around $263 by Monday afternoon.
Verizon’s stock fell nearly 6% after it released its quarterly earnings report, which showed lower than expected revenue. The company’s revenue for the second quarter was $32.8 billion, slightly below the $33.06 billion analysts anticipated, while its earnings per share matched expectations at $1.15. The decrease in revenue has been attributed to customers keeping their old phones longer, affecting upgrade rates for telecom providers offering new mobile plans.