US stocks eye big tech earnings as Fed holds rates

Wall Street stocks finished higher on Wednesday after a choppy session, digesting a status quo US Federal Reserve decision as markets monitored the latest earnings from US tech giants. The Fed, as expected, held interest rates steady, citing the need for more data in the fight against inflation despite persistently elevated pricing pressure. Two dissenting members of the panel voted for an immediate interest rate increase. Major US indices spent most of the day in positive territory but traded within a fairly narrow range. The broad-based S&P 500 finished up 0.3 percent. Art Hogan of B Riley Wealth Management said the market's biggest priority this week is sifting through a deluge of earnings, including Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, two of the biggest companies in artificial intelligence. The tech results are "100 percent the focus," said Hogan. "The market is taking a 'nothing to see here' attitude towards what the Fed did today." Citing higher energy prices in recent weeks, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said "our job is to ensure that relative price changes in some sectors do not broaden out across the economy," Warsh said at a news conference. Still, he said the Fed needed more information in the coming weeks to "determine the policy...