U.S. stocks closed Monday by holding onto modest gains on a day involving little economic or corporate news. Apple announced before the opening bell that it would pay a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share, and it will buy back $10 million of its own shares over the next three years. Shares of Apple jumped after the dividend and buyback announcement, remaining just below $600. Just last week, Apple's stock topped $600 for the first time ever, following strong growth in iPhone and iPad sales. In U.S. economic news, the Treasury Department said that it made taxpayers $25 billion by ending one of its financial crisis portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. Reports on new home sales, housing starts, and existing home sales will be due this week, putting housing in focus. Although the jobs market and the banking sector have been improving, the housing market is still struggling. The dollar fell versus the euro and the pound, and it was flat against the yen. Light sweet crude oil for April delivery increased $1.03 to close at $108.09 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures rose $11.50 to $1,667.30 an ounce. The Dow Jones Industrial average increased 6.51, or 0.05 percent, to 13,239.13. The broader Standard and Poor's 500 index rose 5.58, or 0.40 percent, to 1,409.75. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index increased 23.06, or 0.75 percent, to 3,078.32.
