Wall St closes lower to edge off record high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday as investors engaged in profit-taking to pull major indexes off record levels, while the trend of modest moves and low volume continued heading into the final trading day of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 54.65 points, or 0.3 percent, to 17,983.58, the S&P 500 lost 10.23 points, or 0.49 percent, to 2,080.34 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 29.47 points, or 0.61 percent, to 4,777.44.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski)