On Monday afternoon, the Nasdaq saw a significant rise of 1.5%, or 277 points, influenced by President Joe Biden’s announcement to withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also experienced gains of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political betting, the crypto platform Polymarket has identified Harris as the favored Democratic nominee for president, while New Zealand’s PredictIt forecasts that she will be the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia’s stock rose by 4% after reports emerged that the company is creating a version of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market. They are collaborating with a local distributor, Inspur, to introduce the chip, known tentatively as the “B20,” expected to ship in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has not commented on the report.
Tesla’s shares surged nearly 5% a day before its earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to discuss the delays in the company’s robotaxi project. Musk mentioned on social media that Tesla plans to produce useful humanoid robots for internal use next year, with hopes for broader production for other companies by 2026.
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm linked to a recent global tech outage, is gradually recovering from the impact. The company reported that many of the affected 8.5 million Windows devices are back online, although its stock was down over 13% in the afternoon, hovering around $263.
Verizon’s stock declined by nearly 6% following its quarterly earnings announcement, which did not meet revenue expectations due to customers retaining their old phones for longer. Verizon reported second-quarter revenues of $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ average estimate of $33.06 billion, and earnings per share (EPS) of $1.15, aligned with predictions.