US Dollar Index

In my email:

It's all downhill since January, for sure.

Trump's record. Policy Uncertainty: up. Consumer Confidence: down. And the Dollar: down.

I never heard of the "U.S. dollar index" before. I find it at MarketWatch as U.S. Dollar Index (DXY). I grabbed the 10-year graph, and cropped it to show since just before Covid:

The last high point on the right,  above the 105 level, shows October 1, 2024. Find the tick mark for 2025 and from there go straight up to the blue line at the 104.21 level: That point shows January 1, 2025. Looks like that's where the other graph starts, the first graph. From that point both graphs show strong decline.

The second graph shows an October 2024 peak -- before the November election. But the next data point on the 10-year graph is for January 1, 2025. So the graph does not indicate when the peak was, relative to the election. It  looks like the downturn was an immediate response to the Novemper election, but it turns out that it was not.

Yes, I do look for things like that. All the time.

At MarketWatch the 6-month graph begins in October and shows weekday readings. Looks like the Dollar Index peaked on 13 January 2025 at 109.96 whatevers. The decline started in mid-January. Like Consumer Confidence, the Dollar Index waited a couple of months after the election before starting to fall. It did not make a severe change right after the November election, the way Uncertainty did. Sorry to disappoint.

Back to the 10-year graph. Covid created a comparably large drop from the January 1, 2020 high. And something -- oh, inflation, no doubt -- created a comparably large drop from the high point of July 1, 2022, with CPI inflation having reached 8.99930 percent in June. (Call it 9 percent. It couldn't get much closer.)

Kinda funny: the Dollar Index peaked moments after inflation peaked, and both came down together. Well, as I said, I never saw the Dollar Index before. I don't claim to know what it measures.

Yes, the "This Year" performance on the first graph is an eye-opener. But when eyes are open, the decline is not as overwhelming as that graph makes it look. That first graph only tells me I need to keep an eye on the Dollar Index data, too. I know, it would be more fun to say "Trump is crashing the economy" but I can't say that. Not yet. Yes, I still think he's trying to crash the economy. But that's not the same thing.

It's worse.