Stocks finished little changed, shaking off early gains on an announcement that further stimulus would be added, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned the Fed does not have the ability to shield the economy from the fiscal cliff. The U.S. central bank said it would add $45 billion in Treasury-note purchases to its $40 billion-a-month purchases of mortgage-backed bonds, and would keep official rates near zero so long as the jobless rate remains above 6.5% and inflation is not forecast to rise above 2.5%. Also, no progress has been made in the latest round of fiscal cliff talks. Seagate gave up 3.1% after J.P. Morgan cut its rating to underweight from neutral, citing potentially slower growth in the hard-drive market. Facebook finished its first day as the newest member of the much-watched Nasdaq 100 index losing 1.4%. Netflix jumped 5.4% after Morgan Stanley raised its price target citing the co.’s potential to “disrupt the long-standing premium-cable ecosystem.” Intel added 0.15% a day after the firm announced a new Atom chip for microservers aimed at the lucrative data-center market.
