Podcast: Play in new window | Play in new window (Duration: 13:15 — 6.1MB)

DOW -117 = 17,730
SPX – 14 = 2077
NAS – 40 = 5101
10 YR YLD – .07 = 2.20%
OIL – 2.37 = 37.60
GOLD – 15.10 = 1072.20

Crude prices fell again in the first trading session after OPEC said over the weekend that it would maintain production at the current levels and made no decision on a new target ceiling. An oil glut has cut prices by more than 60% since June 2014. Abandoning an official output ceiling effectively codifies what OPEC has already done for the past year: ignore its previous target of 30 million barrels a day. The cartel produced 31.4 million barrels per day in October. Indonesia also rejoined OPEC on Friday (after being inactive since 2008), boosting the group’s participants to 13 members. Oil prices today dropped to levels last seen in 2009.

There has been an ongoing battle between OPEC and US shale producers with each side pumping massive amounts of oil in the hopes the other would cut production once crude became too cheap. The world isn’t going quite the way Saudi Arabia expected when it led OPEC to declare a pricing war against US shale drillers last year by flooding the market with crude oil. Far from being a quick kill, shale drillers have stubbornly held on, and OPEC has suffered along with them.

Cheap oil has already affected global markets and economies in countless ways, from disrupting Venezuelan politics to sinking the Russian ruble and introducing the world to “low-flation.” In a note to clients, Citi suggested that one of the only things propping up oil prices has been ETF holders thinking that they’ve gotten in at the bottom, even as larger money managers have increasingly given up on forecasting longer-term prices amid greater volatility.

The Labor Department last Friday said U.S. created 211,000 jobs in November after a nearly 300,000 gain in October, keeping the unemployment rate at an eight-year low of 5%. Against the backdrop of a steadily improving labor market the Federal Reserve is gearing up to raise its benchmark short-term interest rate, now near zero, for the first time since 2006. The Fed is expected to pull the trigger after its Dec. 15-16 meeting.

Federal funds futures imply a 76 percent probability of liftoff in December, and the U.S. two-year Treasury has risen by more than 30 basis points over the past two months. The dollar index moved higher following on the heels of its largest one-week loss since May. In the wake of November’s solid non-farm payrolls report, the conversation has now shifted towards how fast the Fed will have to raise rates and to what eventual level.