Oil surges to 17-month high

Crude oil surged to the highest in 17 months amid efforts to cut production, pushing up the outlook for global inflation and sending 10-year Treasury yields above 2.5 percent for the first time since October 2014. Chinese equities tumbled.

Oil jumped more than 4 percent in New York and London after Saudi Arabia signaled it will cut output by more than previously agreed amid a weekend deal to tackle oversupply with competitors such as Russia. Longer-dated securities led declines as government bonds around the world tumbled, while climbing energy shares bucked a drop in Europe’s wider benchmark stock gauge. China’s Shanghai Composite Index sank the most since June as a gauge of smaller companies in Shenzhen plunged more than 5 percent, while U.S. stock futures were little changed.

The oil deal has lit a fire under crude prices, fueling an increase in investors’ expectations for global inflation, and exacerbating a bond rout that had been supercharged by Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s Presidential election. The prospect of increased price pressures is filtering through into the market’s outlook for central-bank policy, with traders seeing 100 percent odds of a rate hike at this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, and a two-in-three chance of additional tightening by June, according to Bloomberg calculations based on fed fund futures

“The spike in oil is behind the further cheapening in global bonds,” said Craig Collins, managing director of rates trading at Bank of Montreal in London. “It’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to have a 25 basis-point rate hike.”-Bloomberg