Merkel speaks, Euro peaks, and the week ahead

This was originally posted to LinkedIn on 5/22

Not a ton of political news affecting the market over the weekend as President Trump began his first foreign trip.

As mentioned last week, Trump is unlikely to commit the kind of gaffes that have led to so many of his domestic troubles while overseas due to how scripted the environment is. As a result, USD should be a tad less volatile.

However that still might not be a good thing for US importers.

Across the pond/ocean/what have you, German Chancellor Angela Merkel went on record saying the Euro is "too weak", leading to a fresh peak for a euro that is already stronger than at any point since the last US election (1.1242 as of this writing, 5/22 at 9:15 est).

Historically she has a point. Even apart from a desire to boost exports in a Eurozone with a slow economy and less cheap labor than the migrant crisis would have you believe, the euro could stand to improve if only to go back to what had been normal levels for a few year.

Until late 2014, EUR/USD was typically in a range of 1.20 to 1.40 with a few rare exceptions. The days of a 1.10, 1.15, even 1.05 euro have been around so long that it's easy to forget that a long-term trend toward dollar weakness could be in large part the market correcting itself.

If you're watching the markets particularly close, keep an eye out for Wednesday's FOMC minutes, Thursday's OPEC meeting, and Friday's US economic data dump.

Unspecific to USD, BofJ Governor Kuroda and ECB President Draghi will be speaking separately Wednesday, either of which could set off notable dollar movement.

Barring major foreign incident, these should be the primary market movers this week.