NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Stocks weakened Monday morning as investors welcomed AT&T's $67 billion purchase of BellSouth and lower oil prices, but played it cautious.

The Dow Jones industrial average (down 4.64 to 11,016.95, Charts), the Standard & Poor's 500 (down 0.57 to 1,286.66, Charts) index and the Nasdaq composite (down 0.87 to 2,301.73, Charts) all lost a few points in the early going.

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Dow component AT&T said Sunday that it was purchasing BellSouth for $67 billion in stock to win the rest of Cingular Wireless it doesn't already own.

AT&T (down $0.74 to $27.25, Research) shares lost around 2 percent in the early going while BellSouth (up $3.40 to $34.86, Research) shares jumped more than 10 percent.

Mergers at this level are usually seen as a good sign for the stock market since they show companies are expecting further strength in the months ahead.

Nonetheless, the broader market was little changed, partly due to the recent rise in Treasury bond yields -- a sign that investors expect interest rates to keep rising -- as well as the recent jump in oil prices despite Monday's slight pullback.

U.S. light crude oil for April delivery fell 48 cents to settle at $63.19 a barrel in electronic trading.

Treasury prices slumped for a third session, raising the yield on the 10-year note to around 4.71 percent from 4.68 percent amid ongoing concerns about higher global interest rates. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Among other movers, Research in Motion (up $9.70 to $81.62, Research) jumped about 13 percent.

The maker of the Blackberry wireless e-mail device said after the close Friday that it has settled its dispute with patent holding company NTP, therefore avoiding a shutdown of Blackberry service.

Stocks fell in Friday's session, due to a profit warning from Intel and a jump in bond yields.

In currency trading, the dollar gained versus the euro and the yen.

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