US stocks had slipped on Monday, led by declines in health and consumer shares, as investors braced for policy news from central banks.

The three major stock indexes posted a second straight month of gains, however, helped by financial shares, which were up 1.7 per cent, while utilities were down 2.8 per cent for the month.

Retail stocks were down on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year. The S&P retail index was down 1 per cent, while Target shares fell 1.3 per cent to $72.50 after its website faced an outage due to heavy traffic.

Shares of brick-and-mortar stores were down following Black Friday, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc, down 1.8 per cent at $58.84, and Macy's Inc, down 2.3 per cent at $39.08.

Sales on Cyber Monday, the busiest day of the year for internet shopping, were up 14 per cent from a year earlier, according to data.

Economic outlook

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is due to address Congress on Thursday and give a speech on the economic outlook the day before.

While the US central bank could raise interest rates in December for the first time since 2006, the European Central Bank is expected to unveil fresh monetary easing measures on Thursday.

Friday's non-farm payrolls report could give further clues on the direction of policy ahead of the Fed's December 16-17 policy meeting.

"There's apprehension on the part of investors to make any big commitments ahead of the data and potential policy moves coming up," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 78.57 points or 0.44 per cent to 17,719.92, the S&P 500 lost 9.65 points or 0.46 per cent to 2,080.46 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 18.86 points or 0.37 per cent to 5,108.67.

For the month, the Dow was up 0.3 per cent, S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent and the Nasdaq gained 1.1 per cent.

The S&P health sector's 1.3-per cent fall led the decliners, with biotech stocks down the most. Consumer staples were down 1 per cent, while discretionaries fell 0.8 per cent.

Other US data expected during the week includes November manufacturing and auto sales reports.

Among other retailers, Staples fell 1.9 per cent to $12.07. The New York Post reported US antitrust regulators were preparing to block Staples' acquisition of smaller rival Office Depot. Office Depot was down 2.4 per cent at $6.59.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,752 to 1,325, for a 1.32-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,516 issues fell and 1,327 advanced, for a 1.14-to-1 ratio favouring decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 15 new 52-week highs and 7 lows; the Nasdaq recorded 127 new highs and 55 lows.

About 7.6 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, above the 6.8 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.

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