Nature abhors a vacuum. People do, too, and generally seek to fill vacuums. With the world drifting under recent terroristic attacks and the threat of more, plus news of beheadings, torture and general mayhem wherever ISIS spreads its grimy wings, no wonder that investors and traders seem relieved and even happy about the particulars of the minutes of the last Fed meeting.

Before examining the specifics of today’s markets, it’s worth a minute to take a look at the resilience of markets across the globe, especially in those economies that have fully embraced the western model of openness and optimism.

Today was a day of recovery for markets as well it was a day of recovery from pondering the awful events in Paris this past Friday.

While we have much political and military business to take care of, it was good to see a little optimism on the stage. There were a couple of important factors driving the uptick of prices in equities, crude and the U.S. dollar.

Regardless of what consumer-spending activities were on a non-granular basis, the fact is that when two volatile components are taken out, in fact spending was very robust.

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.