The price of oil hovered under $87 a barrel Wednesday as hopes that the slowdown in Chinese manufacturing might be stabilizing helped shore up sentiment across financial markets.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark oil for December delivery was down 12 cents to $86.55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That’s a distinct improvement on the $1.98 fall on Tuesday, which left the price of oil at a three-month low of $86.67.