Wall St down on Rosenstein's resignation reports

US stocks, already under pressure since the start of the day on Monday, have declined following media reports. Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, has resigned.

Rosenstein resigned verbally to John Kelly, the White House's chief of staff, and Axios reported this morning citing sources with direct knowledge. The New York Times reported last week that Rosenstein had proposed invoking the 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump from office and proposed secretly registering meetings with the president. Mr Rosenstein rejected the report, calling it "facturally incorrect".

The S & P 500 fell 0.6% following the announcement of the possible departure of Mr. Rosenstein, which had been 0.4% previously. The benchmark fell 0.5%, the second consecutive day of decline from Thursday's record.

Monday marked the first day of trading under the revamped S & P 500 classification system, which mainly redistributed a number of major technology companies such as Facebook and Alphabet to a communications services sector

Energy, up 1.1%, was the best performing sector of the S & P 500 after oil prices reached their highest level in four years. According to Thomson Reuters, technology and healthcare, each up 0.1%, were the only other sectors in the dark. Commodities and consumer goods, each down about 1.3%, and industrial products, down 1.2%, were the worst performers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6% from its closing record on Friday, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.4%.

Government bonds reversed their morning rally, as sales began around the time the Rosenstein news broke out. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield rose 1.3 basis points to 3.0814%.

The dollar was weaker as the pound sterling stabilized from Friday's fragile session when traders reacted to Theresa May's comments on Brexit and Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank's DXY index , which tracks the US currency against a weighted basket of global competitors such as the euro and the British pound, lost about 1 percent to 93.993.