00:00U.S. stocks ended mixed on Wednesday, with the Dow dropping more than half a percent,
00:05while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed basically flat. The indexes seesawed as investors juggled
00:12spiking crude prices, the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, and a quartet of high-profile
00:19tech earnings released after the closing bell. Bob Lang, founder and chief options analyst at
00:25Explosive Options, believes the market may have also been due for a breather. I think there has
00:30been quite a bit of imbalances right now in price action as the markets went up nearly 900 points
00:37on the S&P 500 from the lows at the end of March to where we were just four and
00:44a half weeks later.
00:45So it's an astonishing run, a huge run, but you've got to step back a little bit and say,
00:51okay, look, you know what, maybe we've gone up a little bit too far. And as I always like to
00:55say,
00:55there's a million reasons to sell. There's only one reason to buy. So you could use any excuse in
00:59the world to say that, look, it's time to take money off the table. It's time for the market to
01:03go down, sell off a little bit. Four of the magnificent seven mega cap firms released
01:08quarterly results after the bell. Among them, only Alphabet gained in extended trading,
01:14its shares jumping more than six percent after the Google parent topped Wall Street estimates for
01:19quarterly revenue and profit as enterprise spending on AI delivered the best quarter of
01:25growth for its cloud unit since the start of the AI boom. On the flip side, shares of meta platforms
01:33plunged more than six percent in extended trading after the tech giant lifted its spending forecast
01:39and warned that legal and regulatory blowback in the EU and U.S. regarding youth safety on social
01:46media could significantly impact the company's business and financial results. Shares of
01:52Microsoft dipped in extended trading after the company reported a slight uptick in quarterly cloud
01:58revenue growth that failed to impress investors. And Amazon also edged lower after hours after
02:05reporting cloud sales growth that, while above Wall Street expectations, was lower than rival Alphabet's.
02:12Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates steady was its most divided since
02:171992. The two-day policy meeting, which concluded on Wednesday, was likely Jerome Powell's last as Fed chair,
02:26but he vowed at the press conference following the meeting that he would stay on as governor.
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