By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equities were lower on Monday, pressured by another downdraft in oil prices and worries over growth in China's economy, while holidays in a number of markets muted trading volumes.
Prices of both Brent and U.S. crude fell about 3 percent
Crude again moved within sight of an 11-year low, with Brent at $36.71 and U.S. crude at $36.83 as last week's short-covering dried up and players worried that prices had more room to swoon.
"It's mostly on crude. That's more the issue than anything else," said Paul Nolte, senior vice president and portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 81.13 points, or 0.46 percent, to 17,471.04, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 11.14 points, or 0.54 percent, to 2,049.85 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> dropped 31.47 points, or 0.62 percent, to 5,017.02.
A weak batch of industrial profits raised concerns about China's economy and sent Chinese stocks lower by almost 3 percent, their biggest drop in a month.
Profits at Chinese industrial companies in November fell 1.4 percent from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month of decline and another sign that the world's chief engine of growth for the past decade is sputtering.
With trading light in the United States and Europe due to the bookended holidays of Christmas and the upcoming New Year's Day, as well as a holiday on Monday in the United Kingdom, markets could see exaggerated moves this week.
MSCI's all-country world index <.MIWD00000PUS> lost 0.42 percent, while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index closed down 0.54 percent.
In Europe, the drop in oil prices put pressure on energy stocks such as Repsol
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> gave up early modest gains to fall 0.57, putting it on track for a 12-percent loss this year.
Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes > inched down to 2.2286 percent, up 4/32 in price.
The dollar edged lower against a basket of major currencies, off 0.06 percent at 97.928 <.DXY> as bullish bets on the currency this year on a U.S. Federal Reserve rate hike met year-end profit-taking.
But the drop in oil prices hurt currencies linked to the commodity, such as the Australian > and Canadian dollars >.
The Australian dollar fell 0.1 percent to $0.725 while its Canadian counterpart fell 0.6 percent to $1.3898, heading back towards this month's 11-year lows.
Spot gold > was down 0.5 percent at $1,069.69 an ounce and was on track for its sixth straight quarterly decline, its longest run of quarterly losses since the mid-1970s.
(Additional reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
