2025 marked a turning point for the US Dollar—and it wasn't pretty. The Dollar Index plummeted 9% throughout the year, delivering its worst annual showing since 2017. That's a dramatic 180-degree turn from 2024, when the currency gained 8%.

To put this in perspective: excluding 2017, you'd have to rewind all the way to 2003 to find a weaker performance. This isn't just a bad year for USD—it's a historic reversal that's reshaping how traders think about currency dynamics and what it means for cross-asset correlations moving forward.