Five central bank decisions. WTI breaking triple digits. The Fed’s most divided vote in over three decades. And a confirmed Bank of Japan intervention that erased Wednesday’s dollar rally in roughly the same time it took to build it. The week of April 27–May 1 delivered nearly every scenario condition the framework had modeled — and one it hadn’t.
The framework’s WTI spike regime threshold held: the $99.43–$100 level flagged in Sunday’s cheat sheet and reinforced in Tuesday’s update was breached decisively on Wednesday when Trump rejected Iran’s Strait proposal outright and the EIA reported a 6.23-million-barrel draw. The FOMC outcome matched the update’s Scenario A description with precision — an 8-4 vote representing the most hawkish dissent configuration in over thirty years. But the variables that arguably determined the dollar’s late week direction wasn’t just the Fed or U.S. data…it was also Japan.