Nvidia stock is experiencing one of its most volatile weeks ever. The Nasdaq index experienced a rise of 1.5%, gaining 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 the S&P 500 also saw increases of 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively.
In political betting, the crypto-based platform Polymarket supports Harris’s nomination for the Democratic presidential candidacy, while PredictIt anticipates her being the 47th president of the United States.
Nvidia shares rose by 4% in the afternoon following reports from Reuters that the company is working on a version of its new Blackwell AI chips tailored for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to collaborate with a local distribution partner, Inspur, to introduce and sell this chip, tentatively named the “B20,” projected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. Nvidia has chosen not to comment on the development.
In another development, Tesla’s stock climbed nearly 5% ahead of its upcoming earnings report, where CEO Elon Musk is expected to address the delay in the rollout of the company’s robotaxi service. Musk indicated on social media that Tesla plans to have functional humanoid robots in limited production for internal use next year, with hopes for wider production by 2026.
On a different note, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike continues to deal with the repercussions of a significant global tech outage that occurred on Friday. They reported that while around 8.5 million Windows devices were affected, a substantial number are now online and functioning again. Nonetheless, CrowdStrike’s stock saw a decline of over 13% in afternoon trading, hovering around $263.
Verizon experienced a notable drop of nearly 6% after its quarterly earnings report revealed that it fell short of revenue estimates. The company indicated that customers are keeping their older phones for longer, negatively affecting upgrade rates associated with promotional plans. Verizon’s second-quarter revenue totaled $32.8 billion, slightly below the analysts’ projected figure of $33.06 billion, while its earnings per share met expectations at $1.15.