The Nasdaq Composite rose by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon after President Joe Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also saw gains, increasing by 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In the realm of predictions, the crypto betting platform Polymarket supports Harris as the Democratic nominee, while PredictIt, a New Zealand-based platform, forecasts she will become the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia’s stock rose by 4% in the afternoon trading session after reports emerged that the company is working on a version of its Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to collaborate with a local distributor, Inspur, to launch a product tentatively named the “B20,” which is expected to start shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not provided any official comments on this development.
Tesla’s stock price climbed nearly 5% a day before its earnings report, during which CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to share updates regarding the rollout of the company’s delayed robotaxi. Musk stated on social media that Tesla plans to produce “genuinely useful humanoid robots” for internal use next year, with hopes of high production for other companies by 2026.
On the other hand, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm associated with a major tech outage last Friday, continued to deal with the aftereffects days later, but reported improvements. They noted that a considerable number of the 8.5 million Windows devices affected are now operational again. However, CrowdStrike’s shares fell over 13% on Monday afternoon, trading at around $263.
Verizon experienced a nearly 6% drop in its stock price following the release of its quarterly earnings report, which fell short of revenue expectations. The telecommunications giant attributed the results to customers retaining their older phones longer than usual, negatively impacting upgrade rates associated with promotional plans. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue was reported at $32.8 billion, just under analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share (EPS) was consistent at $1.15.