Stocks mixed, but still head for blowout month [Video]

Oil settles down amid Israel-Hamas truce extension

Oil prices moved lower on Monday as Qatar announced that a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas will be extended for another two days.

Crude oil (CL=F) ticked down slightly to settle at just below $75.50 a barrel. Brent (BZ=F) crude, the international benchmark price, settled at just above $80.

As Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré reports:

Oil prices have been volatile since a surprise attack by Hamas on Israel last month. A four-day cease-fire brokered by Qatar was set to expire on Tuesday. Both Israel and Hamas had said they were open to extending the truce in order to allow more captives to be freed.

Markets are also awaiting the consortium of the world’s largest oil producers’ next steps on output cuts at a key OPEC+ meeting this Thursday.

OPEC+ surprised the markets last week by rescheduling its last meeting of the year to Thursday instead of Nov. 26, signaling disagreements among its members over future production cuts.

The group’s largest member, Saudi Arabia, was reportedly pressuring smaller OPEC+ members to take a bigger part in reductions. Riyadh has unilateral production reductions in place of 1 million barrels per day through year-end, apart from the cartel’s output cuts.

“As we go forward there [are] now disagreements because you have countries that want to increase production,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told Yahoo Finance on Friday. “These disagreements between Saudi Arabia and the others have led to these delays we’ve seen.”