NEW YORK: The US dollar weakened after comments from US Federal Reserve officials drove views that interest rate hikes could be delayed, lifting pressure off metals prices, while stocks clawed out small gains after last week’s rout.

Stronger-than-expected data out of China gave the bulls some respite, but traders remained cautious after numbers out of China and Germany last week pointed to a global slowdown.

Brent crude oil fell to its lowest level in almost four years after key Middle East producers signaled they would keep output high even if that meant lower prices.

Stock traders on Wall Street were bracing for the full onslaught of the quarterly earnings season, with many expecting the next move in equities to take its cue from corporate outlooks for the rest of the year.

The US bond market was closed for the Columbus Day holiday.

“It seems like the market’s sort of jogging,” Stephen Carl, principal and head of US equity trading at The Williams Capital Group in New York, said about the market’s lack of conviction on Monday.

“This should be a smaller volume day and will pick up tomorrow when everybody’s back from Columbus Day.”

Earlier, technical indicators dominated trading as the S&P 500 broke below 1,900 and its 200-day moving average, before recovering.

“The fact we broke 1,900 on the S&P, the 200-day moving average, if we don’t close above there today, that means the trip to lower levels is more than probable at this point,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 24.59 points, or 0.15 percent, to 16,568.69, the S&P 500 gained 1.07 points, or 0.06 percent, to 1,907.2 and the Nasdaq Composite added 15.39 points, or 0.36 percent, to 4,291.63.

The S&P 500 last week posted its largest weekly decline since March 2012 on continued concern about the strength of the global economy.