How far the US dollar has moved against 29 world currencies in 1, 5 and 10 years

Ten years of European Central Bank reference rates show one US dollar buying more of 17 of the 28 currencies with a full record on October 30, 2026 than on October 28, 2016, and less of the other 11. The spread is enormous: 1,501.8% more Turkish lira, 49.2% more Japanese yen and 42.1% more Indian rupees at one end, 17.2% fewer Swiss francs and 18.9% fewer Israeli shekels at the other. Weighted by how much the United States trades with each economy, the change looks modest: the Federal Reserve's broad dollar index rose 6.5% in the ten years to October 23, 2026.

The study turns the ECB's euro rates into dollar rates for every currency the ECB quoted on October 30, 2026, compares each with the same date one, five and ten years earlier, and adds the Fed's index as a trade-weighted yardstick. The sections below explain the sign convention, the extreme cases and what the moves mean for anyone who sends money across borders or owns US assets from another country. The invest-from-abroad hub covers the US rules that apply to non-US investors.

Key findings

• Ten years. A dollar bought more of 17 of the 28 currencies with a 10-year record. The biggest gains were against the Turkish lira (1,501.8%), Brazilian real (70.3%), Japanese yen (49.2%) and Indian rupee (42.1%); the biggest declines against the Israeli shekel (−18.9%), Swiss franc (−17.2%), Czech koruna (−11.9%) and British pound (−9.3%).
• One year. The dollar was higher against 17 of 29, led by the lira (19.0%), Indonesian rupiah (8.9%) and Romanian leu (8.7%), and lower against the Norwegian krone (−8.6%), Australian dollar (−7.0%), South Korean won (−6.9%) and Chinese yuan (−6.5%).
• Five years. It was higher against 20 of 29, including 38.1% against the yen and 26.8% against the rupee.
• Trade-weighted. The Fed's broad index read 121.32 on October 23, 2026: 0.3% above a year earlier, 6.7% above five years earlier and 6.5% above ten.
• The window decides the answer. Twelve of the 28 currencies moved in opposite directions over one year and ten. The dollar gained 3.4% on the euro over the past year yet bought 2.2% fewer euros than in 2016.
• Pegs barely register. The Hong Kong dollar moved 1.2% or less over every horizon, and the Danish krone tracked the euro.

How was the dollar's change against each currency measured?

Each change compares how many units of a currency one dollar bought on October 30, 2026 with the same figure one, five and ten years earlier.

The ECB quotes its rates as units of each currency per euro. They come from a daily concertation between European central banks around 14:10 CET and are posted around 16:00 CET on every TARGET business day. The dataset, built with Frankfurter, an open-source API that republishes central-bank reference rates, divides each currency's euro rate by the dollar's euro rate to get units per dollar. On October 30, 2026, for example, one euro cost $1.1172 and ¥175.68, so one dollar bought 175.68 ÷ 1.1172 = ¥157.25. When the matching date fell on a weekend or holiday, the previous business day was used, which is why the five- and ten-year comparisons use October 29, 2021 and October 28, 2016, the Fridays before weekend dates.

The ECB says its rates are published for information only and strongly discourages using them for transactions. They describe the market at one moment each day, not a price anyone can deal at.

The list is the ECB's, so it holds the 28 currencies the ECB quotes against the euro plus the euro itself, not every currency in the world. Currencies the ECB has dropped are absent: it last set a Russian ruble rate on March 1, 2022, and it removed the Bulgarian lev from its January 2, 2026 publication, after Bulgaria adopted the euro on January 1. The króna lacks a ten-year figure because the ECB suspended it in December 2008, after Iceland imposed capital controls, and restored it from February 1, 2018.

Which currencies moved most against the dollar?

Over ten years the dollar gained most against the Turkish lira, Brazilian real and Japanese yen, and lost most against the Israeli shekel and Swiss franc.

The table runs from the largest ten-year dollar gain to the largest loss, with the króna, which has no ten-year figure, at the end. Big emerging Asian currencies sit high on it: a dollar bought 39.1% more Indonesian rupiah, 31.2% more Philippine pesos and 42.1% more rupees than in 2016. The bottom rows are the currencies that gained on the dollar, led by the shekel, the franc, the koruna, the pound and the Singapore dollar (−8.3%).

Brazil shows how much the starting point matters. A dollar bought 70.3% more reais than in October 2016 but 3.7% fewer than in October 2021 and only 0.7% more than a year earlier, so the real's entire ten-year fall had happened by 2021, followed by a small recovery.

Twelve of the 28 currencies with both figures moved the opposite way over one year and over ten:

Ask whether the dollar is strong against the won and the answer is yes since 2016 and no since October 2025. Any claim about the dollar's strength needs both a currency and a start date.

How did the yen, rupee, peso, euro, pound and yuan move month by month?

They took very different paths: the rupee weakened fairly steadily, the yen plunged in 2022, and the peso ended where it began after big swings.

Each line starts at 100 on October 28, 2016 and rises when a dollar buys more of the currency, so a reading of 149.2 means 49.2% more. Readings are taken on the last business day of each month.

Yen. The line stayed between 97.8 and 111.1 until the end of 2020, when it touched that low. It then climbed to 154.1 at the end of June 2026, so at that peak a dollar bought 57.6% more yen than at the low (154.1 ÷ 97.8). The steepest stretch came in 2022, from 109.6 at the end of February to 141.1 at the end of October, while the Fed lifted the top of its target range from 0.25% to 3.25%. The Bank of Japan kept a negative short-term rate from 2016 until March 19, 2024, and on October 30, 2026 it held its policy rate at about 1.25%, against a federal funds target range of 3.75% to 4.00%.

Rupee. This is the steadiest one-way move in the chart. After dipping to 95.2 in January 2018, the line has not ended a month below 100 since April 2018; it reached 143.5 at the end of September 2026 and stood at 142.1 a month later.

Peso. Big swings, almost no net change. The line jumped to 126.9 at the end of March 2020, the month the Fed cited the coronavirus outbreak when it cut its range to 0 to 0.25% on March 15. It fell to 88.1 at the end of March 2024 and finished at 100.5.

Euro and pound. The two moved together for much of the decade. Both peaked at the end of September 2022, at 112.0 and 110.0, when a dollar bought 12% more euros and 10% more pounds than in 2016, and both have since fallen back, to 97.8 and 90.7. The euro's low was 87.7 in January 2018 and the pound's 85.6 in May 2021.

Yuan. It stayed in the narrowest band of the six, between 92.7 in March 2018 and 107.9 in October 2023, and ended at 98.1 after the dollar fell 6.5% against it over the last year.

Why did the Turkish lira lose so much against the dollar?

It fell alongside Turkish inflation that ran many times faster than US inflation for most of the decade, and alongside rate cuts made while inflation was rising.

TurkStat's annual consumer price inflation, as published by Turkey's central bank, was 7.16% in October 2016. Between September and December 2021 the central bank cut its one-week repo rate from 19% to 14% while inflation rose from 19.58% to 36.08%, and its 2021 annual report records direct dollar sales on five days that December totalling $7.278 billion. Inflation peaked at 85.51% in October 2022. The bank then raised its rate from 8.5% in June 2023 to 50% by March 2024 and has cut it in steps since December 2024, with one rise, to 46%, in April 2025; it has stood at 36% since October 23, 2026. Annual inflation was 29.73% in September 2026, against 3.7% for US consumer prices in the 12 months to the same month.

The past year shows the other side. A dollar bought 19.0% more lira on October 30, 2026 than a year earlier, a smaller rise than the gap between Turkish and US inflation over roughly the same months. In other words, Turkish prices rose faster than the lira fell, so dollars converted into lira bought less in Turkey than they had a year before.

Why do some currencies move in lockstep with the dollar or the euro?

Because they are pegged: Hong Kong keeps its dollar between HK$7.75 and HK$7.85 per US dollar, and Denmark keeps the krone close to a fixed euro rate.

Hong Kong's Linked Exchange Rate System has run since October 17, 1983. Its band allows a move of at most 1.29% from one edge to the other (7.85 ÷ 7.75 − 1), and the study's figures stay inside that limit: 1.0% over one year, 0.9% over five and 1.2% over ten. At 7.8457 on October 30, 2026, the rate sat near the weak end of the band.

Denmark participates in the EU's exchange rate mechanism, ERM II, at a central rate of 7.46038 kroner per euro with a ±2.25% band, and Danmarks Nationalbank says it has held the krone much closer to that rate since the late 1990s by buying or selling kroner and by adjusting its interest rates. The krone floats against everything else, so the dollar's moves against it mirror its moves against the euro: 3.5%, 4.7% and −1.8% over one, five and ten years, against 3.4%, 4.2% and −2.2% for the euro.

Why did the Fed's broad dollar index rise only 6.5% in 10 years?

Because it weights currencies by trade: those with the most weight moved little against the dollar, while the biggest movers carry little weight or none.

The Fed describes the broad index as a weighted average of the dollar's value against the currencies of a broad group of major US trading partners. Its current weights, in use since February 2, 2026, give the euro area 21.0%, Mexico 14.8%, Canada 12.8% and China 10.9%, about 59% together. Over ten years the dollar moved −2.2% against the euro, 0.5% against the peso, 4.3% against the Canadian dollar and −1.9% against the yuan. Japan, where the dollar gained 49.2%, carries 5.2% of the weight and India 3.4%. Turkey is not in the index, so the lira's collapse never reaches it.

Ten-year endpoints also hide the path in between. On FRED, the index peaked at 130.04 on January 13, 2025, 14.2% above its October 21, 2016 level of 113.90, before falling back to 121.32. The Fed revises the weights each year, and its release notes that revisions can change past index values, so a figure retrieved later may differ slightly.

What do dollar moves mean for people sending money?

For a US sender, a positive change means each dollar converts into more of the recipient's currency, but whether it buys more depends on prices there.

The reverse holds for anyone abroad who pays bills in dollars, such as US tuition or a dollar loan. A $40,000 tuition bill would cost ₹3,798,000 at the October 30, 2026 rate; at the rate of ten years earlier it would have cost about 3,798,000 ÷ 1.421 ≈ ₹2,672,800.

Waiting for a better rate is a bet on a currency. The peso index shows a dollar buying 44% more at one month end than at another, and nothing in the record said in advance which month would be which. The figures here are also reference rates: a bank or transfer service adds its own margin and fee, so less arrives than the arithmetic shows. The mid-market exchange rate explains the benchmark, exchange rate markups shows how to find the margin in a quote, and our study of the cost of sending $200 abroad shows what senders paid by corridor. Live rates are on the currency converter, for example dollars to rupees and dollars to yen, and the corridor guides for Mexico and India cover the practical side. The money transfer hub lists every route.

What do dollar moves mean for non-US investors in US assets?

The dollar's move is layered on top of the asset's return: a stronger dollar adds to a foreign owner's result at home, and a weaker one subtracts.

At home, the result is (1 + the asset's return in dollars) × (1 + the dollar's change against the home currency) − 1. The guide to currency risk on US investments works through that formula and what hedging costs. Applied to the study's ten-year changes, an illustrative 40% gain in dollars between October 28, 2016 and October 30, 2026 lands very differently by home currency:

The 40% is an illustration, not the return of any fund. A holding that was flat in dollars would have returned exactly the dollar's change: 49.2% for an investor counting in yen and −17.2% for one counting in francs. The arithmetic runs the other way for US-based investors who own foreign assets: a franc-denominated asset gained about 20.8% in dollar terms from the currency alone (1 ÷ 0.828 − 1), and a yen-denominated one lost about 33.0% (1 ÷ 1.492 − 1).

A big currency gain measured at home is the mirror image of a weaker home currency, and part of it may only keep pace with local prices, as the lira example shows. For dollar cash and Treasury bills held from abroad, the currency can matter more than the interest: over the past year the dollar rose 7.0% against the rupee and fell 7.0% against the Australian dollar, moves that can outweigh a year of the yields listed in today's T-bill rates. Holding US dollars abroad compares where to keep dollar cash, and whether a currency gain is taxable depends on your country's rules, covered in reporting US investments at home.

What does this currency data leave out?

It leaves out retail costs, inflation, the path between the endpoints and every currency the ECB does not publish.

• Endpoint dates. Each change compares two single days, and moving either end by a few weeks can shift a figure by several points; the peso's month-end index ranged from 88.1 to 126.9 within the same decade.
• One snapshot a day. ECB rates capture the market around 14:10 CET. Other benchmarks, such as the Fed's noon New York rates, give slightly different numbers for the same day.
• Cross rates. Every dollar rate is computed from two euro rates published to a fixed number of digits, so the last decimal can differ from a direct dollar quote.
• Reference, not retail. Nobody trades at these rates; fees and exchange-rate margins come on top.
• Nominal only. No figure is adjusted for inflation. A currency can fall against the dollar while prices at home rise even faster, as the lira did over the past year. The Fed also publishes an inflation-adjusted broad index, monthly, which this study does not use.
• A selective list. Which currencies appear is the ECB's choice, and the currencies of large economies such as Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and Colombia are missing, so the counts of 17 of 28 and 17 of 29 describe this list, not the world.
• Gaps and sampling. The króna has no ten-year figure, and the month-end chart covers six currencies, so it misses moves within a month.
• Two calendars. The broad index's latest reading is a week older than the ECB rates, and its past values can change when the Fed revises its weights.

What can a decade of exchange rates tell you?

It shows how far and how unevenly currencies can drift, but it cannot tell you where any exchange rate goes next.

Past performance never predicts future results, and exchange rates are no exception. Within the same decade, the dollar's rise against the rupee came with few interruptions, its rise against the yen came in a burst after four years of going sideways, and its swings against the peso cancelled out. The single trade-weighted figure of 6.5% sat far from the experience of anyone whose money is in one particular currency.

For planning, the number that matters is the change in the currency you will spend. Real returns and inflation shows how to adjust a return for prices, and FX risk for small businesses covers how firms limit currency swings on invoices. Our study of the S&P 500 after Fed rate cuts looks at another set of dated market moves, and the dollar in 2026 so far follows this year's news.

Reusing and citing the currency tables

The main table downloads as a CSV, and you may reuse it under CC BY 4.0 if you credit the source and link back to this page.

• The CSV file has 29 rows: currency, code, units per dollar on October 30, 2026 and the 1-, 5- and 10-year changes. The month-end index and key numbers can be quoted on the same terms.
• Give both dates with every change, for example: one dollar bought 42.1% more Indian rupees on October 30, 2026 than on October 28, 2016, at ECB reference rates.
• Keep the sign convention, positive meaning the dollar strengthened, and say that the figures are reference rates rather than rates offered to customers.
• Suggested credit: Source: Sonic Wallet analysis of European Central Bank euro reference rates (via Frankfurter) and the Federal Reserve's Nominal Broad U.S. Dollar Index (FRED series DTWEXBGS), data through October 30, 2026.

How studies are sourced, dated and corrected is set out in the editorial policy.