Stocks Finished with Little Changed

U.S. stocks finished with little changed on Thursday after trading in a tight range and spending much of the session in the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 19.71 points, or 0.12%, to 17,049.00. The S&P 500 ended up 1.76 points, or 0.09%, to 1,997.45. The Nasdaq Composite gained 5.28 points, or 0.12%, to 4,591.81.

The U.S. budget deficit narrowed 22 percent in the first 11 months of the fiscal year as accelerating economic growth boosted tax receipts, Treasury Department figures showed.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is facing perhaps its most pivotal meeting of the year next week, as it debates a potential overhaul of its guidance on interest rates and seeks to nail down a plan for exiting its extraordinarily easy monetary policy.

Federal investigators have uncovered a flurry of communications between a Washington research firm and several hedge funds, opening a new front in an insider-trading probe focused on the firm’s 2013 investor alert about a change in government health-care policy.