U.S. stocks ended higher on Monday after Apple announced its plan to pay dividend and buy back stocks.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained the most among three major indexes after Apple announced a quarterly dividend of 2.65 dollars a share, the first time for the company since 1995.

Apple, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, owns 97.6 billion dollars in cash from massive iPod, iPhone, iPad and Macintosh sales. It also launched a 10 billion dollar share repurchase program, which will be executed over three years.

Shares of Apple rose 2.65 percent on Monday, closing above 600 dollars for the first time in the company's history.

On the economic front, the National Association of Home Builders reported that its builder sentiment index stayed at 28 after gaining for five consecutive months, still the highest level since June 2007.

The announcement from Apple, alongside a steady stream of upbeat U.S. economic data, came a few days after major U.S. banks responded to the results of the Federal Reserve's stress tests by announcing bigger dividends and billions of dollars in stock buybacks.

Investors' sentiments have been driven to a much higher level than weeks ago, when negative European news dominated the market.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 6.51 points, or 0.05 percent, at 13,239.13. The Standard & Poor's 500 was up 5.58 points, or 0.40 percent, to 1,409.75. The Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 23.06 points, or 0.75 percent, to 3,078.32.

As for other markets, the U.S. dollar fell against most major currencies in late New York trading on Monday as optimism rose in the market. The dollar index lost 0.4 percent to 79.46.

U.S. crude oil price rose on Monday as the dollar weakened against its major counterparts, while the Brent crude edged down on rising production in Libya and Saudi Arabia.

Light, sweet crude for April delivery gained 1.03 dollars, or 0. 96 percent to settle at 108.09 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In London, Brent crude for May delivery edged down 10 cents to close at 125.71 dollars a barrel.