Oil prices rebound

Oil prices bounced and Wall Street stocks declined Monday, reversing the most recent trends as markets eye the end of a bruising second quarter.

After positive sessions for several leading European and Asian bourses, Wall Street stocks were in the red most of the day, and finished modestly lower.

The broad-based S&P 500, which has fallen about 14 per cent since the end of the first quarter, shed 0.3 per cent on Monday.

Wall Street last week enjoyed a rare positive performance amid talk that weakening economic data may have set the stage for central banks to tighten less aggressively than they have been suggesting.

But the first session of the week also revealed angst over the current macroeconomic backdrop.

Economists are increasingly pessimistic about the potential for US policymakers to engineer a  "soft landing" as central banks tighten monetary policy, reversing a after a long period of rock-bottom borrowing rates due to surging inflation.