* Oil price trims losses after hitting multi-year lows
* Europe stocks erase early gains
* Historic Fed rate decision looms
(Adds open of U.S. markets, byline, dateline; previous LONDON)
By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Global equity markets slipped
in choppy trading on Monday as oil prices struggled to halt
their slide and weakness in credit markets weighed on sentiment,
with investors cautious ahead of an expected U.S. interest rate
hike later this week.
Brent crude LCOc1 was down 2 percent at $37.17 after
falling as low as $36.33 a barrel, its weakest since December
2008. A fall below $36.20 will take oil prices down to levels
not seen since 2004. U.S. crude CLc1 was little changed, up
about 0.03 percent at $35.63 after earlier falling as low as
$34.53.
The declines in energy weighed on commodity stocks in
Europe, which turned negative after a positive start, while the
S&P energy sector .SPNY , down 0.8 percent, weighed on Wall
Street.
Jitters in high-yield bond markets, which are among the most
vulnerable to higher U.S. rates, also rattled investors. Lucidus
Capital Partners has liquidated its entire portfolio and plans
to return the $900 million it has under management to investors
next month, according to a media report.
The SPDR Barclays (L:BARC) High Yield Bond ETF JNK.P was off 0.7
percent at $33.46 and the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate
Bond ETF HYG.P lost 0.9 percent at $78.77.
"The tone is clearly negative today, but not nearly as
negative as it was when you had a $34 handle on WTI, that was a
key pivot point," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at
Wunderlich Securities in New York.
"Away from that, the narratives and the themes are the same
- we are concerned about junk bonds, we continue to be concerned
about energy prices because we gave up almost 11 percent last
week and are down 35 percent year to date."
MSCI's all-country world index .MIWD00000PUS lost 0.6
percent, while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 index
fell 1 percent to 1,383.95, erasing an earlier gain of 1
percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 43.82 points,
or 0.25 percent, to 17,221.39, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 5.27
points, or 0.26 percent, to 2,007.1 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC dropped 16.62 points, or 0.34 percent, to 4,916.84.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR lost 14/32 in
price to yield 2.1883 percent.
The U.S. dollar slipped against major currencies, giving
back earlier gains to resume last week's weakness on worries
that heightened market volatility, caused by the tumult in oil
prices and credit markets, could limit the number of U.S.
interest rate hikes.
The dollar index .DXY was down 0.1 percent at 97.46 and
the euro was up 0.3 percent at $1.102 EUR= .
A Fed rate hike on Wednesday, following a two-day policy
meeting, is a near certainty in the eyes of investors. It would
be the first increase after nearly a decade of loose policy that
began with the onset of the global financial crisis, and is
viewed as a first step towards normalizing monetary conditions.
Traders see an 85 percent chance the central bank will lift
its targeted rate range to 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent from the
current zero to 0.25 percent range, according to CME Group's (O:CME)
FedWatch program.
But against a backdrop of crumbling oil prices and stress in
the high-yield bond market, analysts said the pace of future
rate hikes is of key interest to investors.
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)