The start of a new year had Wall Street treading carefully, with investors looking for further gains in the U.S. labor market in beginning 2015's first full week of trading.
"The biggest number of the week is employment. People are a bit more cautious as we head into the beginning of 2015," said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade.
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"The main focus is going to be the jobs numbers, as long as people are feeling better about the jobs picture, the rest of the world matters less," said Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones, referring to slowing growth in Europe and Asia.
Equity investors tracked the price of crude, U.S. Treasury bonds and the strengthening U.S. dollar in considering the firmness of the global economy and implications for Wall Street.
"With oil down, everyone is trying to reassess how strong 2015 will be, I would say we're seeing caution as investors start the year," said Warne.
"People are a bit more cautious as we head into the beginning of 2015; the 10-year and 30-year, these levels are taking everybody by surprise, after all this talk in the third week of December that we're going to see rising rates," Kinahan said of falling Treasury yields.
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"Financials are always key, with these rates down, these companies have become incredibly efficient, but at some point, these low rates are going to effect them," he said of the benchmark 10-year yield used to figure mortgage rates and other consumer loans.
"With everybody back to work, it'll be interesting to see do we get a rotation back out of fixed income, and what sectors do we go to," Kinahan said.
On Friday, U.S. stocks were little moved, with the S&P 500 extending losses into a third session, after economic reports showed manufacturing slowing at the end of 2014, a year that had the S&P rising more than 11 percent.
On tap this week:
Monday
10 a.m ET.: Motor vehicle sales for December
Tuesday
10 a.m.: ISM nonmanufacturing for December
10 a.m.: Factory orders for November
Wednesday
8:15 a.m.: ADP employment for December
8:30 a.m.: Trade deficit for November
2 p.m.: FOMC minutes
Thursday
8:30 a.m.: Weekly jobless claims
3 p.m.: Consumer credit for November
Friday
8:30 a.m.: Nonfarm payrolls for December
8:30 a.m.: Unemployment rate
10 a.m.: Wholesale inventories for November
This article originally appeared in CNBC.
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