Wall Street capped a choppy day of trading with a mixed finish Wednesday as a late-afternoon pullback among several Big Tech companies offset gains elsewhere in the market.

The S&P 500 closed 0.1% lower after having been up by 0.7% earlier in the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had been up 0.5% before finishing with a gain of just 0.1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.

Facebook parent company Meta fell 2%, Google’s parent company Alphabet gave up 1.6% and Microsoft dropped 1%.

Still, gainers outnumbered decliners by a nearly 2-to-1 margin on the New York Stock Exchange.

Automakers were among the bright spots. General Motors surged 9.4% after the company announced a big stock buyback, raised its dividend and told investors it won’t have any trouble absorbing the costs of its new labor contract.

Private equity giant Blackstone will acquire the pet care app Rover in an all-cash deal valued at $2.3 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.

Shares of Rover climbed about 28% on news of the deal, which will pay Rover shareholders $11 per share. Blackstone said that amounts to a 61% premium over the Rover’s average share price during the past 90 trading days.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, at which time Rover will no longer be a publicly-traded company.

Rover was founded in 2011, connecting pet owners with care providers who provide boarding, in-home pet sitting and dog walking, among other services.

U.S. economic activity slowed in recent weeks as consumers pulled back on discretionary spending, the Federal Reserve said in its “Beige Book” survey of regional business contacts.

“Sales of discretionary items and durable goods, like furniture and appliances, declined, on average, as consumers showed more price sensitivity,” according the report released Wednesday. “Travel and tourism activity was generally healthy.”

The Beige Book includes anecdotes and commentary on business conditions in each of the 12 Fed districts.

Central bank officials are increasingly relying on this type of information to assess the path of the economy and inflation.

While government statistics are the gold standard of economic data, the figures are generally backward-looking and subject to revision.

Labor demand continued to ease, with respondents noting reductions in headcount through layoffs or attrition and most districts reporting flat to modest increases in employment.