Stocks were choppy in the lead-up to today's Federal Reserve policy announcement. While the main indexes made a confident move higher after the central bank cut rates by a half-percentage point, a late-day burst of selling pressure sent them into the red at the close.

Wall Street is hanging near its records after the Federal Reserve kicked off its efforts to prevent a recession with a bigger-than-usual cut to interest rates. The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher in afternoon trading Wednesday,

Oracle jumped 11.4% to an all-time high and helped lead the market after delivering better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Gains for several influential Big Tech stocks also helped drive indexes, including rises of 2.1% for Microsoft and 2.4% for Amazon.