On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq experienced a notable increase of 1.5%, adding 277 points, following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
The cryptocurrency betting platform Polymarket has named Harris as its predicted Democratic nominee for the presidency, while PredictIt, based in New Zealand, forecasts 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 for the Chinese market. Nvidia is reportedly collaborating with local partner Inspur to design and distribute the chip, tentatively called the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s shares jumped nearly 5% ahead of its upcoming earnings report. CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the delayed unveiling of the company’s robotaxi during the report. He stated, “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 the downside, CrowdStrike has been dealing with the repercussions of a significant global tech outage caused by its systems last week. The company reported that out of approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices, many are now operational once again. However, CrowdStrike’s stock fell over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading at around $263.
Verizon also faced a decline, with its stock dropping nearly 6% following the release of its quarterly earnings report. The company reported revenues of $32.8 billion, slightly lower than analyst expectations of $33.06 billion, while earnings per share met forecasts at $1.15. The drop in revenue is attributed to customers retaining their older phones for longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates in the industry.