The Euro completed an important week of trading last week with a close above the important $1.33 level, which, after the ECB policy meeting and successful Spanish and Italian bond auctions, confirms a significant breakout setting up a continued bull market through at least Q1 of 2013.  You can check out more details here. The important thing to remember is that if the Euro ends this month over $1.33 then that is a strong signal of real U.S. Dollar weakness for the year.  This is what the Federal Reserve wants, ultimately, it just doesn’t want it to happen in such a way that they lose control over it.

With Monday a zero big news day other than Bernanke’s introduction to Twitter, the markets were relatively placid (outside of a spurious Dell announcement).  Brent crude looked to have put in a short-term bottom before reversing after the COMEX closed to pop back over $111 per barrel.  With options expiration this week there is a good chance that there will be no confirmatory breakout signals in those things highly correlated with rising inflation expectations: gold, silver and oil.  Silver jumped back over $31 but will need to hold above $31.20 through the end of the week for it to be significant, otherwise it is just churn.

Gold as well, needs a weekly close above last week’s high of $1678.15 to take on a short-term bullish posture.  With the GLD option pain number at $162 and GLD closing today at $161.54 I’m not optimistic.