Field notes from a restaurant floor, a trading screen, and a lot of unfinished software.

On my radar now

A hawkish set of Fed minutes and a rough day for the biggest retailer in the country set the tone. The July FOMC record showed three presidents wanted a rate hike outright and the case circulated far wider than the dissent count suggested, and Thursday the Dow gave back more than 700 points as the Treasury-driven bond rally faded. Walmart beat on earnings, raised guidance, and still fell about 9 percent because US comparable sales grew only 2.6 percent, the slowest since 2020, which reads as a warning about how carefully people are spending. Bitcoin went the other way and squeezed to its highest level since early June. Anthropic published wet lab results showing Claude designed working protein binders against 14 of 15 targets, Samsung raised advanced chip prices up to 15 percent because AI demand has filled the lines, and Subway launched its hot honey lineup while Denny's opened a national catering channel. In New Hampshire, unemployment sits at 2.8 percent and employers still cannot find workers, Rochester residents pushed back on data centers, and the state collected another 7 million dollars in PFAS settlement money.