At the close on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones fell 1.14%, the S&P 500 fell 0.20%, the NASDAQ Composite index rose 0.14%.

McDonald's Corporation was the top performer among the components of the Dow Jones index today, up 5.22 points or 1.94% to close at 274.11. Chevron Corp rose 2.93 points or 1.65% to close at 180.49. Apple Inc rose 1.18 points or 0.88% to close at 135.94.

The least gainers were Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which shed 24.08 points or 6.44% to end the session at 349.92. The Travelers Companies Inc (NYSE:TRV) was up 4.60% or 8.92 points to close at 185.00 while Verizon Communications Inc was down 2.41% or 1.01 points. and finished trading at 40.85.

Leading gainers among the S&P 500 components in today's trading were Tesla Inc, which rose 7.43% to 131.49, Morgan Stanley, which gained 5.91% to close at 97.08, and NVIDIA Corporation, which rose 4.75% to end the session at 177.02.

The least gainers were Emerson Electric Company, which shed 6.82% to close at 91.24. Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc lost 6.44% to end the session at 349.92. Mohawk Industries Inc lost 6.30% to 111.18.

Leading gainers among the components of the NASDAQ Composite in today's trading were Celyad SA, which rose 137.80% to hit 1.90, Calyxt Inc, which gained 90.25% to close at 0.35, and Avenue Therapeutics Inc, which rose 63.11% to end the session at 1.99.

Shares of Viveve Medical Inc were the least gainers, losing 70.54% to close at 0.26. Shares of Edesa Biotech Inc lost 42.06% to end the session at 1.46. Quotes of Angion Biomedica Corp fell in price by 30.88% to 0.70.

On the New York Stock Exchange, the number of securities that rose in price (1,579) exceeded the number of those that closed in the red (1,484), while quotes of 99 shares remained virtually unchanged. On the NASDAQ stock exchange, 1960 companies rose in price, 1775 fell, and 168 remained at the level of the previous close.

The CBOE Volatility Index, which is based on S&P 500 options trading, fell 0.67% to 19.36.

Gold futures for February delivery lost 0.53%, or 10.25, to hit $1.00 a troy ounce. In other commodities, WTI crude for March delivery rose 1.42%, or 1.14, to $81.25 a barrel. Futures for Brent crude for March delivery rose 2.56%, or 2.16, to $86.62 a barrel.

Meanwhile, in the Forex market, the EUR/USD pair remained unchanged 0.23% to 1.08, while USD/JPY fell 0.28% to hit 128.18.

Futures on the USD index rose by 0.18% to 102.13.