Today's Stock Market News: Where the Dow Jones Industrial Average Ended

U.S. stocks welcomed a solid lift in Monday's trading session, with all three major indexes closing up. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 0.64%, or 104 points, to close at 16,207 points; the S&P 500 closed up 0.64%, or 12 points, at 1,848; and the Nasdaq closed up 0.69%, or 30 points, at 4,293 points.

Energy futures remained buoyant along with the stock market today, with the exception of natural gas, which finally plummeted 18% back to about $5.46 per million BTUs today after settling up 18% last week.

Light, sweet crude oil for April delivery was up about 0.7% at $102.95 per barrel, and heating oil for April delivery was up 0.5% at $3.05 per gallon.

Meanwhile, metals futures were also trading in positive territory. Gold for April delivery was flat at $1,323.60 per ounce; silver was up 0.04% at $22.06 per troy ounce; and platinum was up 0.9% at $1,441.20 per troy ounce.

Note: The Fed's 2014 taper means volatility ahead. So we've outlined how to find profits in a volatile market - like triple-digit gains in just days - if you start with this strategy...

Several major retail stocks made headlines in today's session, including eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY), The Men's Warehouse Inc. (NYSE: MW), and Jos. A Bank Clothiers Inc. (Nasdaq: JOSB).

The Men's Warehouse was up more than 8%, marking a day high of $49.46, after it upped its bid for apparel retailer Jos. A Bank to a cash offer of $63.50, which was conditioned on Jos. A. Bank ending its agreement to acquire the Eddie Bauer brand. It's original offer was $57.50 per share.

Sweetening the deal, Men's Warehouse also offered to increase that bid to $65 per share if it could conduct limited due diligence with access to Jos. A. Bank's management teams.

And eBay shares were up 3.2%, marking a day high at $56.73, after it responded to a critical shareholder letter from Carl Icahn, who attacked eBay's chief executive officer as seeming to be "completely asleep or, even worse, either naïve or willfully blind." He called for PayPal to be spun off from eBay.

EBay's official response called Ichan's criticism "mudslinging" and said eBay and PayPal would remain one unit.

In other stocks that have welcome significant gains today, Blackberry Ltd. (Nasdaq: BBRY) was up 9% on reports that its head of user experience, Don Lindsay, left the company. Other reports on Blackberry today say Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) plans to drop Microsoft Windows technology in favor of Blackberry QNX software for its in-car technology.

Also, Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE: STNG) stock was up 8% after it offered first-quarter guidance as its fourth-quarter earnings missed the Street consensus.

The crude oil transporter said it expects to be profitable this quarter after suffering a loss of $0.08 per share. It declared a quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share.

Among today's losing stocks, HSBC Holdings plc (NYSE: HSBC) shares were down about 2.3% on its annual results.

The bank reported $0.84 per share in earnings for 2013, up from $0.74 per share in 2012. Revenue was $63.3 billion, up from $61.6 million the year before. HSBC declared a $0.40 per share quarterly dividend, payable March 14.

Today's Must-Read Investment Analysis: The One Thing You Must Know to Hit It Big with a Biotech Stock