Wall Street ends mixed ahead of big tech earnings

STORY: U.S. stocks ended mixed on Wednesday, with the Dow dropping more than half a percent, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed basically flat.The indexes seesawed as investors juggled spiking crude prices, the Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision, and a quartet of high-profile tech earnings released after the closing bell.Bob Lang, founder and chief options analyst at Explosive Options, believes the market may have also been due for a breather."I think there's been quite a bit of imbalances right now in price action as the markets went up nearly 900 points on the S&P 500 from the lows at the end of March to where we were just four and a half weeks later. It's an astonishing run, a huge run. But you've got to step back a bit and say, look, maybe we've gone up a little bit too far. As I always like to say, there's a million reasons to sell, there's only one reason to buy. You could use any excuse in the world to say that, look, it's time to take money off the table, it's time for the market to go down, sell off a little bit." Four of the Magnificent Seven megacap firms released quarterly results after the bell.:: GoogleAmong them, only Alphabet gained in extended trading, its shares jumping more than 6% after the Google parent topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue and profit, as enterprise spending on AI delivered the best quarter of growth for its cloud unit since the start of the AI boom.On the flip side, shares of Meta Platforms plunged more than 6% in extended trading after the tech giant lifted its spending forecast and warned that legal and regulatory blowback in the EU and U.S., regarding youth safety on social media, could significantly impact the company's business and financial results.:: MicrosoftShares of Microsoft dipped in extended trading after the company reported a slight uptick in quarterly cloud revenue growth that failed to impress investors.And Amazon also edged lower after hours, after reporting cloud sales growth that, while above Wall Street expectations, was lower than rival Alphabet's.Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates steady was its most divided since 1992.The two-day policy meeting, which concluded on Wednesday, was likely Jerome Powell's last as Fed Chair, but he vowed at the press conference following the meeting that he would stay on as governor.