The funeral for the U.S. dollar is a popular service. It draws a crowd every time the DXY index tags an old line on a chart. Then the line holds. The mourners go back to work. The dollar does not stay buried.
That is the argument The Market Ear published Thursday under a headline that writes its own punchline. The dollar is dead. Long live the dollar. The desk’s point is not that America is virtuous. It is that the consensus short is running into both price and relative fundamentals. Support is nearby. Europe still has an energy problem. The yen just thrashed around without breaking its larger map.
For anyone who owns gold, copper, or a Canadian miner, that map matters more than a speech about debasement.
What the Dollar Did, Not What the Thread Said
It was not long ago, the note says, that most pundits were pushing the bearish dollar story. DXY has now put up its strongest stretch of consecutive gains since mid-June. On Sept. 8, at the lows, the same shop argued that pressing dollar shorts was the wrong debasement trade. This week is the receipt.
Look at the long picture they printed. A rising trend line on DXY has been in place since 2008. Every test of that line revives the same sermon. The dollar is finished. The system is breaking. Buy anything that is not a claim on Washington. Then the index finds the line and turns up. Until that line actually breaks, The Market Ear says the breakdown thesis is not their trade. Let the trend be your friend is an old line because it keeps paying people who wait for a break instead of announcing one.
A bounce from long-term support is not a new reserve-currency era. It is a reminder that “dead” is a forecast, not a print.
The Euro Still Pays the Energy Bill
The other half of a dollar call is always “versus what.” Versus the euro, this desk is not interested. Europe is many things. It is not, in their words, a place they want to be long the currency. The major EUR downtrend is intact.
The reason they keep repeating is crude and measurable. Europe remains the world’s biggest relative energy sucker. That is a clear relative negative for the euro. Period. Their overlay of the euro against a European energy series makes the same point the last two winters made. A bloc that must import the thing that runs the plants does not get to talk like a surplus power when the fuel bill spikes.
That sits next to this week’s political theatre. Ursula von der Leyen offered Canada an associate title that is not in the treaties and talked critical minerals in the same breath. Donald Trump called the pitch laughable and maybe hostile. None of that changes the energy math. A speech in Strasbourg does not put molecules in a German pipe. A tariff threat does not either. The currency market can smell a structural importer.
If the euro cannot rally on values, it will not rally on an undefined Canadian membership either.
The Yen Is the Wild Card, Not the Obituary
The Japanese yen is the piece the note will not wave away. The latest price action has been aggressive. Zoom out and the yen has barely moved since late 2023. That is a different sentence from “the dollar is collapsing.”
They flag a major trend line in place since 2021. The 100-week moving average comes in around the same level. They would not bet against that confluence of support. In English: a violent week in USD/JPY is not the same as a regime change. Support is close. Respect it.
A yen squeeze can knock the dollar around for a month. It can also wash out and leave the old dollar uptrend on the page. Traders who treat every yen spike as proof of American decline keep paying tuition.
Debasement Is a Stock of Claims. The Dollar Is a Relative Price
Here is the confusion that keeps burying the same trade.
Yes, Washington prints. Yes, debt is large. Yes, gold can rise in a world of fiscal slop. That is a claim about the purchasing power of all paper over years. It is not a claim that DXY must fall next week against the euro and the yen.
Relative price is a beauty contest among the ugly. If Europe’s energy deficit is worse, and Japan’s policy mix is still a puzzle, the dollar can rally while gold also holds a bid. That pairing has happened before. It is happening in the argument this desk is making. Shorting the dollar because you hate the Fed is how people confuse a moral position with a position.
This week’s Fed backdrop does not rescue the short either. Kevin Warsh’s committee just raised the funds target by 25 basis points, to 3.75%–4.00%. The dots moved up. Rabobank called it a new reaction function. You can argue the hike does not fix a supply shock. You cannot argue that tighter U.S. policy is a gift to people who are short the dollar against energy-poor Europe.
What It Means for Metal and Canadian Paper
A firmer DXY is not automatically death for gold. It is friction. Gold likes real rates, fear, and central-bank buying more than it likes a weak-dollar slogan. If the dollar’s long line holds, the metal has to work through a stronger bid for U.S. cash, not lean on it.
For copper and bulk miners, dollar strength is a tax on the printed price and a relief for some cost books. For Canadian producers, the loonie often moves with commodities and with the U.S. rate gap. A dollar that refuses to die can cap CAD and squeeze the translation of a good mine into a good share — or help exporters, depending on the week. Neither outcome is a reason to treat The Market Ear’s chart as a buy list.
The useful discipline is the same one they printed. Wait for the 2008 line to break before you treat the dollar-breakdown thesis as a trade. Until then, the debasement story can still be true in gold ounces and still be the wrong FX short.
The Line That Has to Break
Markets love a funeral. Funerals do not move trend lines.
The Market Ear is not saying the dollar is a saint. It is saying the bear case met a bounce, Europe still sucks energy, and the yen’s drama has not yet broken its own support. That is a smaller claim than “the reserve currency is finished.” Smaller claims are the ones that survive a month of price.
Watch the line since 2008. Watch the euro’s energy bill. Watch whether the yen’s confluence holds. The rest is commentary.
Disclaimer
Based on The Market Ear’s Sept. 17, 2026 note “The Dollar Is Dead—Long Live The Dollar,” including its LSEG Workspace charts and references to a Sept. 8 dollar-short commentary. Currency and commodity markets are volatile. This is analysis, not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any currency, metal, or equity.