Currency Strength Meter
Which of the eight majors is leading and which is lagging, ranked by each currency's average move against the rest of the basket. Built on official ECB reference rates, updated every ECB business day.
By Joey van Diest, founder and editorUpdated
Strength ranking (1 week)
Basket as of 2026-07-23; window is 1 week of ECB business days. Positive = stronger than the basket average.
Each line is a currency's value against the equal-weighted basket, rebased to 100 a year ago. Rising = strengthening.
The formula
gₓ = rate₀(x) ÷ rate₁(x) (gross appreciation of x vs EUR)
strengthₓ = mean over y ≠ x of (gₓ ÷ gᵧ − 1)
Every currency is quoted against the euro in the ECB table. Over the chosen window, a currency's gross appreciation versus the euro is just its start rate divided by its end rate (fewer units of the currency per euro means it strengthened). Divide one currency's appreciation by another's and you have their cross move; average that across the other seven and you have a single strength number that does not privilege the euro or any other base. The euro is handled identically, with an implicit rate of 1.
A worked example
Suppose over a week the dollar rose 1% against the euro while the yen fell 1% against the euro, and the other five majors were flat. The dollar's move against the basket averages its gains over the euro, the yen and the flat five: strongly positive. The yen's average is strongly negative. The euro and the flat currencies land near the middle, slightly negative because they lost ground to the dollar but gained on the yen. Read the ranking top to bottom and you can see at a glance that a rising USD/JPY that week was dollar strength meeting yen weakness, both legs pushing the same way, rather than a one-sided move. That is the meter's main job: decomposing a pair into its two currencies.
Using it well
The ranking is most useful the moment after a surprise: when a currency jumps to the top or bottom of the list, the economic calendarusually explains why, a hot inflation print, a hawkish central bank, a risk-off session that lifts the dollar and franc together. From there, the converter and per-pair pagesgive you the exact rate and one-year context for whichever cross the meter flagged. What the meter cannot do is tell you the move will continue: it is a daily-resolution rear-view mirror on relative performance, not a forecast, and on an official once-a-day fix it will always trail the live market by design.
Frequently asked questions
- How is "strength" defined here?
- For each currency we average its percentage move against every other currency in the basket over the chosen window. A reading of +0.8% means that, on average, this currency bought 0.8% more of the other seven than it did at the start of the window. It is a relative measure: the numbers within one window roughly balance around zero, because one currency can only strengthen against another that weakened. It says who is leading and lagging, not whether "the market" is up.
- Why only eight currencies?
- The eight majors (USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, AUD, CAD, NZD) are the most traded and the cleanest to compare against each other on official ECB data. Adding thin or managed currencies would distort the average without adding insight. If you want a specific cross rate, the converter and per-pair pages cover 30 currencies.
- Can I trade off this?
- Treat it as context, not a signal. A strength meter is a fast way to see which currency is driving a pair, if a EUR pair is moving, is it euro strength or the other leg's weakness? But it is built on one ECB reference point per day, so it lags intraday moves and says nothing about why a currency is moving or whether the move will continue. It pairs best with the economic calendar: strength shifts usually trace back to a specific release or central-bank event.
- Why does it update only once a day?
- It is built on the ECB's daily reference rates (one fix per business day, around 16:00 CET), the same public-domain, commercially usable data behind our converter. That is a deliberate trade-off: an official, verifiable yardstick rather than an unattributed "live" feed. The window therefore moves in daily steps, and weekends carry Friday's fix.
Method and limitations
Strength is computed in your browser from a baked, one-year table of ECB euro reference rates for the eight majors (base EUR, refreshed once per ECB business day). Your visit never queries an upstream API. Because the source publishes one fix per business day, the meter moves in daily steps and cannot reflect intraday moves. It is a relative performance measure, not a price you can trade and not a forecast.
Data sources
- European Central Bank reference rates via Frankfurter — daily euro FX reference rates; basket as of 2026-07-23
For general information and education only. This is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Trading and investing carry risk, including the risk of losing more than your initial outlay. Always verify figures against your broker or the original source before acting on them.
Spotted an error? Email[email protected]and it will be corrected. Maintained byJoey van Diest.