The Dow and S&P were flat on Monday. USA Today headlined its Money section, “Wall Street Builds Case for Year-end Stock Rally.”

As I have been saying, there is often a year-end rally, but this year Wall Street and the Democrats seeking to hold the White House need a year-end rally.

Bulls think the correction is behind them. Lurking in the background is the possibility of a crisis event that will force some sort of bailout to forestall such an event occurring before the election.

This is something Bush-43 was unable to pull off in 2008, but for now the authorities may be able to keep the rally going just by keeping QE-n in place.

Results from Canada illustrate the importance of the economy to a party that expects to hold onto power. Early in the campaign this blog noted a report by Deirdre Bosa that resource-rich Canada had slipped into recession. Some Democrats are concerned that the recovery is fragile enough that it could happen here, so even a token rate increase is unlikely next year.

If rates rise, it will be because the market takes control of the time table. Appearing on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that to be prudent, Treasury bases its forecast on an assumption of 4% interest.

Over 100 earnings reports are slated for this week. Morgan Stanley (MS), a favorite of sell-side analysts, surprised them with an earnings shortfall, as did IBM. Both companies were supposed to be undergoing successful remakes, but if, in the words of Guy Adami, “Price is truth,”

Monday’s action calls into question whether they have succeeded. MS was the beneficiary of one of the 2008 bailouts. IBM has stretched out the mainframe story to its limit and maybe beyond.

There is a school of thought that oil is the most important story of all. Certainly its price exhibits important relationships with interest rates, the dollar, and the economies of the US and other countries that produce and consume oil.

In a recent CNBC appearance, Dennis Gartman, Publisher of The Gartman Letter had predicted a rise in the price of oil, citing a decline in the rig count.

Gartman predicted that WTI would not rise much above 50 and has a potential downside of 37. Gartman hastened to dismiss the notion that the pending OPEC meeting will yield anything of significance. Now he thinks, “At this point, crude oil is going to be a very boring circumstance for the next year or so.”

Thus, it has the potential to rise back to 50 to 52 and he thinks 37 will define the potential downside. Gartman concludes, “I think on balance that’s going to be very good for the economy, because I think you’re going to have much more stable WTI and Brent crude prices for the next year and a half or so I think at this point – we just talked about the fact that IBM might be dead money – I think WTI might be dead money.”

Steve Grasso then agreed with Gartman and asked him what investors should buy at this point, whether it might be refiners or miners.

Gartman responded that with the Russians competing for the Saudi trade with Poland, it would increase demand for tankers, the easiest and best trade. He noted that most of these stocks had risen up to 100% in the past year and did well Monday.

Coincidentally, David Pursell, of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, told a skeptical Melissa Lee that he thinks a million-barrel daily drop in supply over the next year will support a price of $80 by the second half of 2016.