A man sits on a marble wall as pedestrians walk on the streets in front of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, U.S., October 3, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

(Reuters) - U.S. equity index futures fell on Sunday after a stinging defeat for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who said he would resign following a referendum over his proposals for constitutional reform.

Exit polls and early projections on Sunday showed Renzi lost the referendum by a wide margin.

“Buy bonds and sell stocks,” hedge fund investor Douglas Kass, who runs Seabreeze Partners Management Inc, said after the vote. “The technicals and fundamentals and political/geopolitical considerations are all souring.”

S&P 500 e-mini futures ESv1 were down 0.3 percent shortly after electronic trading resumed on Sunday evening - paring some losses after initially falling 0.5 percent - signaling Wall Street could start the week on a shakier footing after stumbling last week for the first time since the Nov. 8 U.S. election.

Last week, the S&P 500 .SPX shed 1 percent. Major Wall Street indexes had previously hit a series of record highs over the past three weeks following Republican Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election, as investors rotated into sectors expected to benefit from campaign promises of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and bank deregulation.