The Dow shed four-tenths of a percent and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both lost roughly three-tenths of a percent.

But it was the first session after all three indexes notched their biggest weekly percentage gains of the year, leading Lisa Erickson, Head of Public Markets Group at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, to chalk up Monday's losses to profit-taking.

"We're really having a little bit of a reset market today. If you just think about 2024 as a whole, you have a situation where the market has been fairly Goldilocks, encouraged both by signs of inflation slowly and bumpily moving to its target, as well as the Fed (the Federal Reserve) on pause and then hopefully potentially moving to pivot. And yet the macro fundamentals generally coming in better than expected. And so we've really actually had just quite a nice run in terms of equity prices."

Last week, the Federal Reserve maintained its guidance for three interest-rate cuts this year. Markets are now pricing in a more than 70% chance of a rate cut in June, according to CME's FedWatch Tool.

In company news, shares of Boeing rose more than 1% after the company announced a broad management shakeup that included the departure this year of CEO Dave Calhoun, as the planemaker looks to resolve its aircraft safety issues.

Shares of Walt Disney gained 3% after Barclays upgraded the stock to "overweight" from "equal weight."

And Micron Technology, whose memory chips are used in artificial-intelligence related hardware, surged more than 6% to close at a record high.

The February reading of the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, is due on Friday, when markets will be closed for the Good Friday holiday.