NEW YORK, New York - U.S. stocks had a volatile and skittish day on Monday but still managed to eke out gains.

"More of a cyclical day, or value day, than a growth day, but not overwhelmingly. We've had two weeks of a cyclically dominated market and that was initiated by the vaccine," Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York told Reuters Thomson Monday.

"The market is battling between those two styles of investing depending on the outlook of the virus versus the vaccine."

The Dow Jones index did best, climbing 327.79 points or 1.12 percent to 29,591.27.

The Standard and Poor's 500 gained 20.05 points or 0.56 percent to 3,577.59.

The Nasdaq Composite advanced 25.66 points or 0.22 percent to 11,880.63.

The U.S. dollar had a mixed day. The euro fell sharply after rising earlier in Asia. By the New York close Monday the EU unit had fallen to 1.1839. The British pound was robust ahead of Brexit on 31 December 2020. The UK unit finished the day around 1.3322. The Japanese yen weakened sharply to 104.58. The Swiss franc eased to 0.9126.

The Canadian dollar fell to 1.3080. The Australian dollar dropped sharply to 0.7286. The New Zealand dollar, after reaching nearly two year highs, fell almost half-a-cent to 0.6923.

On overseas equity markets the FTSE 100 fell 0.28 percent. The German Dax was down 0.08 percent, while in Paris, France the CAC 40 declined by 0.07 percent.

On Asian markets, the Australian All Ords closed up 32.10 points or 0.48 percent at 6,772.00.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 on the other hand closed down 106.63 points o 0.42 percent at 25,527.37.

In China the Shanghai Composite gained 36.76 points or 1.09 percent to 26,457.57.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong, traded mostly in the red Monday but rallied towards the close. The key index finished up 34.66 points or 0.13 percent at 26,486.20.