Wall Street ends lower as Middle East tensions escalate

STORY: Wall Street's main indexes tumbled on Wednesday, with the Dow losing about 1.2%, the S&P 500 shedding about three-quarters of a percent and the Nasdaq falling roughly nine-tenths of a percent.Flaring tensions in the Middle East and rising crude prices stoked inflation jitters and convinced investors to take some profits.Energy stocks, buoyed by oil prices, enjoyed the largest percentage gains, with Exxon Mobil and Chevron both closing higher. Meanwhile, six of the Magnificent Seven group of megacap tech stocks ended lower, with Meta the only exception.Liz Miller is founder and president of Summit Place Financial Advisors."I more and more just keep seeing this market as a ping pong. One day we've got the momentum leading tech stocks up and then that drives all the indices up. And the next day we've got sort of the second tier undervalued companies up and the index is down. [FLASH] Today's again, one of those days where we're seeing energy with the most strength. We're seeing some of the consumer come through, some of the industrial, but techs are marginally down. And that's what I mean when I think about this market as a ping pong market, because these are high quality companies, they're large cap, they would be top tier fundamentally, but they haven't really participated as much in the index strength."Among individual movers, shares of GameStop jumped 6% after the original meme stock posted a rise in quarterly revenue and unveiled a $2 billion share buyback program.Shares of Crowdstrike, down nearly 3% at the close, dropped about another 10% in extended trading after the cyber security company reported a 15% jump in its first-quarter operating expenses as it ramps up investments in AI and product development.And shares of Broadcom fell more than 6% in extended trading despite the company forecasting third-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations, betting on robust demand for its custom AI chips and networking gear.