Stocks Close Flat, Nasdaq Composite Gains on Apple Rally

U.S. stocks ended Wednesday’s choppy session essentially flat, but Apple helped boost the Nasdaq after an activist investor’s bullish comments. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 6.62 points, or 0.04%, to 17,862.14. the S&P 500 was up 0.06 point, to 2,068.53. The Nasdaq Composite rose 13.54 points, or 0.28$%, to 4,801.18.

Apple extended a record as billionaire activist Carl Icahn raised his anticipated price for the company’s shares.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday. The network technology company posted earnings of 53 cents a share, up from 47 cents per share in the year-earlier period. Revenue rose to $11.94 billion from $11.16 billion a year ago, a 7 percent increase.

The U.S. budget deficit widened slightly in January, a sign that sustained declines of the past five years are flattening out. The federal government’s deficit for the first four months of the fiscal year totaled $194 billion, up from $183 billion in the same period a year earlier, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.