Stocks end mixed on quiet August day

Corporate deal stories and technology stocks were bright spots on Wall Street yesterday on a day when the indexes ended relatively flat.

BlackBerry Ltd. jumped after the struggling smartphone maker said it would consider a sale. Dole Foods rose after its CEO said he would take the company private, and Steinway Musical Instruments gained after receiving a new buyout offer.

Apple, another smartphone maker, was also in the news. The tech giant's stock rose after the blog AllThingsD said the company would release the latest version of its iPhone on Sept. 10. The stock's rise helped make technology stocks the leading gainers in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

Still, those gains didn't push the broad-market index up for the day. The S&P fell 0.12 percent to close at 1,689.47. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0.04 percent at 15,419.68.

Stocks had opened lower after logging their biggest weekly loss in almost two months. By late morning the losses had been pared, and the S&P and Dow remained marginally lower throughout the day.

Apple rose $12.91, or 2.84 percent, to $467.36. It makes up 7.9 percent of the Nasdaq composite, pushing the index up 0.27 percent, to 3,669.95.-- AP