Wednesday Afternoon Cheat Sheet: 3 Stories That Moved Markets

The U.S. equity markets took a hit this morning thanks to a mixed reading of U.S. housing data, and stocks continued their slide in the afternoon after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s most recent meeting indicated that the central bank may slow or stop buying bonds sooner than investors had hoped. As a result, the S&P 500 posted its worst day in over 3 months.

At the close: DJIA: -0.77%, S&P 500: -1.24%, NASDAQ: -1.53%.

Here are three stories that moved markets on Wednesday:

1) The total amount of money spent on lobbying declined for the second year in a row last year, but major technology companies are still using their cash to influence officials. In 2012, several of the biggest names known to Americans made the top 10 list of technology lobbying expenditures. According to the Senate Office of Public Records and Statista, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) came in first with $16.5 million, representing a 70 percent increase over 2011. The search engine giant spent more than Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) combined.

Statista explained, “When you dominate a market the way Google dominates the search market, you will almost inevitably face antitrust allegations sooner or later. For the past two years, Google has been subject of an FTC investigation because of the way the company allegedly arranges search results to feature its own products more prominently … (Read More.)