West Texas Intermediate crude fell over 3.00% today while Brent North Sea cratered by almost 3.70%. Both drops in price are signs that oil is about to test its recent (August) lows, and that prices could perhaps go lower.

The sound-barrier piercing drop in crude prices in the last four sessions has finally gotten everyone’s attention on worries that U.S. government data will show a seventh weekly U.S. rise in reserve stocks.

U.S. traders awoke today to data from China that increased concerns of deflationary pressure and lack of domestic-market response to stimulus measures so far.

The threatened rate increase – which just about everyone has had enough of discussing – is like getting pecked to death by ducks. You become so insensate at the constant noise and poking that eventually you throw your hands up and surrender.

So, let’s look beyond that for a moment. There are other great riddles in the markets today to contend with.

Today’s U.S. jobs report served to bolster expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at their next meeting six weeks from now.

The expectation was that the U.S. would gain about 180,000 jobs in the latest Department of Labor report. The truth was 50% more than that as October’s job gains clocked in at 271,000.

Markets that trade in New York and Chicago found themselves not so much down as they were downbeat in tone, searching for some direction other than Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s hawkish rate comments yesterday before Congress.

“It could be appropriate” to act at the Fed’s final policy-making meeting of the year in mid December, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen told the House Financial Services Committee.

She said the American economy was “performing well,” hinting that if growth continued apace, the Fed could start raising interest rates next month. She added a warning, however: “No decision has been made.”

If you look closely at the manufacturing data released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce, you’ll quickly see that the worst of the industrial slump is over or almost over.

Non-defense capital goods (excluding aircraft), a crucial measure of business confidence and spending plans, slipped a mere 0.1% instead of the 0.3 percent drop reported last month (August).

The Commerce Department said that U.S. construction spending rose 0.6 percent in September to the highest level since March 2008, pushed up by a surge in apartment building.

A week that started with fear over what the Federal Reserve might do in its meeting just concluded this past Wednesday, ended up being a good week for equities, and, in spite of major bumps in the road, a very good week for crude. Gold seems to be puzzled by what went down at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday.