July 30, 2026

Presented By

Get ready for a thrill. A Six Flags theme park in New Jersey unveiled plans to build a new roller coaster it says will break six world records. The park says that when the coaster, named Bakunawa after a serpent from Philippine legend, opens next year, it will be the world’s: 1) fastest spinning coaster (zooming 100 miles per hour) 2) fastest inversion 3) first upside down launch 4) longest stall inversion 5) tallest spinning coaster and 6) first floorless spinning coaster. We don’t know if there’s a world record for getting sickest on an amusement park ride, but we bet we could break that one, too, if we get the chance to visit.

—Sam Klebanov, Abby Rubenstein, Dave Lozo, Holly Van Leuven

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The Fed’s rate decision
Big Tech earnings
The “worst aquarium ever”

Markets

Nasdaq

24,442.94

-1.74%

S&P

7,316.15

-1.52%

Dow

51,594.14

-2.19%

10-Year

4.622%

+2.0 bps

Bitcoin

$63,334.88

-0.87%

Hims & Hers

$25

-14.73%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Investors did not have a happy hump day. As bond yields rose yesterday following the Fed’s decision to keep interest rates steady despite inflation (more on that below), stocks plunged, giving the Dow its worst day since April 2025.
Stock spotlight: Hims & Hers fell after the FTC sued the company, claiming it shared users’ health information with advertising platforms, including Meta and Snap. The company denied the allegations.

Markets Sponsored by Cytonics

Time to invest closes soon: Backed by 7,500+ people, Stanford, and Scripps Research, Cytonics is developing what could be the first and only cure for osteoarthritis. Invest before the round closes.

STEADY, AS SHE GOES

Fed keeps rates steady…and everyone in the dark

Kevin Warsh speaking at the podium during a press conference

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Fed keeps acting like a teacher who refuses to answer any questions about what’s going to be on the test. While announcing yesterday that interest rates are staying unchanged, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh continued with his tight-lipped approach to communicating future rate expectations.

But…if one were to guess from the few clues out there, it looks like rate hikes could be on the horizon:

Yesterday’s decision to keep rates stable wasn’t unanimous. Three regional Fed presidents—out of 12 total members on the committee that sets borrowing costs—voted to hike rates.
Investors largely expect the Fed to hike rates at its next meeting in September, with some analysts saying surging oil prices reaccelerating inflation will necessitate the move.

For now, though, the Fed held its benchmark rate steady in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%.

Vague king

Still, anyone looking to predict the future isn’t getting big hints from Warsh. The central bank released a concise statement that was almost identical to the one it issued after Warsh’s first rate meeting as Fed chair last month, containing little about its plans other than to “deliver price stability.” The statement noted that the economy is growing “at a solid pace,” despite uncertainty from the Iran war. It also acknowledged that inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target rate, which it attributes to supply disruptions.

Unlike Warsh’s predecessors, who would often give markets a subtle heads-up regarding impending rate changes, he prefers big-picture statements about monetary policy and having investors guide Fed decisions. He thinks central bankers keeping mum forces government bond traders to interpret the economic situation themselves, which the Fed can use to inform rate moves.

Big picture: The lack of hand-holding from the Fed has led to increased volatility in bond markets and a breakdown in investor consensus about future rates. With less certainty than usual, investors priced in a 30% chance of a rate hike ahead of yesterday’s meeting, according to the FedWatch tool.—SK

Reader poll

Do you think the Fed will raise rates next time?

Yes, they have to tackle inflation.
No, Warsh doesn’t want to raise rates.
Maybe, let’s see what the data looks like in September.
I don’t know and neither does anyone else.

Sponsored By Cytonics

A next-gen drug targeting a $560b disease

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the world’s most common diseases, with over $560 billion spent managing its symptoms each year. But that may soon change for its 500+ million patients.*

Cytonics may have discovered what could be OA’s first cure. Now they're pushing toward FDA approval on a 200%-more-potent version of their new drug, engineered for global scale after successfully completing Phase 1 clinical trials.**

Potential medical breakthroughs like this are rare. Opportunities to invest before the next major milestone are even rarer. While nothing’s guaranteed, an uncured $560 billion disease is exactly where Big Pharma’s known to look for acquisitions.

The investment window closes soon. Become an early-stage shareholder in Cytonics before the window closes.

World

Tour de headlines

Adobe Stock

📉 Meta is spending almost all of its free cash flow on AI-related spending. Meta reported earnings after the market closed yesterday and revealed that its free cash flow was down 91% in Q2 2026 compared to a year prior. The company is still making money, it’s just also spending a lot of it. Meta’s capital expenditures for its AI systems, like servers and data centers, increased 83%, to $31.08 billion. Some of Meta’s investment is already delivering returns, though, as it reported AI improvements led ad revenue to grow by 27%. Meta’s stock fell by nearly 10% in after-hours trading following the report.—HVL

📈 Microsoft held capex plans steady and announced an Azure milestone. The company that gave the world Clippy beat Wall Street’s expectations for its fourth-quarter earnings. For the first time, Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform topped $100 billion in revenue in the fiscal 2026 year, up 41%. The service is larger than Google Cloud but still smaller than Amazon Web Services. The company also left its capital expenditures plan unchanged, news that investors welcomed in the face of burgeoning AI spending elsewhere. Microsoft stock rose by nearly 9% in after-hours trading.—HVL

🤐 Fauci takes the Fifth. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who led the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic, repeatedly refused to answer questions during a tense Senate hearing yesterday, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times (which, as you may recall from any cop show, is the right to avoid self-incrimination). Sen. Rand Paul, who led the hearing and aggressively questioned Fauci about the origins of the pandemic, said there would “be repercussions” for his refusal to answer questions. Fauci, for his part, criticized Paul’s “obsession with calling for my prosecution,” and said the senator had only sought his testimony in hopes of getting him to say something that would land him in hot water.—AR

Special delivery

DoorDash is making its own drones

Illustration of a drone flying with a bag of food with a hamburger on it

Nick Iluzada

Look, up in the sky! It’s not a bird or a plane…it’s a drone carrying your burrito. The company that lets you order takeout with just a few clicks because calling a restaurant is too much effort is now refining even more sophisticated tech for its new drone delivery business, DoorDash Air.

The US’ largest delivery company said yesterday that it received a certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate a commercial drone delivery service. However, DoorDash doesn’t expect to launch these deliveries until the fall.

If you want futuristic food delivery before then, you’ll need to be in one of the locales where DoorDash currently partners with Alphabet’s Wing or Flytrex—partnerships the company said it will keep even as it becomes a competitor.

DoorDash plans to pull off an act of coordination even more complicated than getting your whole family to agree on which restaurant to order from. It aims to use its software edge and build “the full stack” to facilitate drone deliveries, including ground infrastructure and handoff systems.

Why drones? Like DoorDash’s delivery robot Dot, the drones are intended to cut costs per delivery, as well as speed them up, especially three- to five-mile trips, which the company said typically take 25% longer than shorter trips, in part because finding human delivery people takes time.—AR

Sponsored By State Street Investment Management

Sponsor: State Street Investment Management

Invest like you’re going places. Because you are. With ETFs like MDY, you can tap into a powerful combination of resilience, quality, market opportunity, and outperformance potential. Discover how MDY—the original mid-cap ETF—delivers cost-efficient, liquid exposure to 400 US-based mid-sized companies in a single trade.

Invest in where you’re going with the growth potential of mid-caps.

TERMINAL DIAGNOSIS

Trump unveils $22.5b plan to remake Dulles Airport

Trump sitting at desk in the Oval Office surrounded by White House staff with model of new Dulles airport

Ken Cedeno/Getty Images

Dulles Airport, perhaps most famous for having people movers that have been dubbed “mobile torture chambers,” will receive a $22.5 billion makeover, President Trump announced yesterday. The plans would maintain the classic exterior design, but gut the antiquated interior, bringing the airport’s infrastructure into the 21st century.

President Trump, who was personally involved in the new designs, unveiled the plans in the Oval Office alongside United CEO Scott Kirby—whose airline handles roughly 70% of traffic at Dulles:

Congress hasn’t appropriated the funds for the extreme makeover, and Trump said the airlines would cover some of the costs. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said bonds will be issued and United is “going to partake in part of the payment.”
Travel platform View From The Wing expressed concerns, saying the high price tag would make it unlikely for United to be able to offer low-cost fares.

What improvements are coming to the airport featured in Die Hard 2? Its existing concourses will be streamlined and expanded (and, in some cases, bulldozed and replaced). And its current underground rail system will be extended to bring passengers all the way to their terminals, removing the need for the dreaded “people movers” that have bridged that gap since the airport opened in 1962.

Looking ahead…Trump said the ambitious project could hopefully be completed in two years—though the airlines originally expected it to take 60 years.—DL

Molly explains the internet

A whale of a t-shirt

New Bedford Whaling Museum

The online world can be a beautiful yet confusing series of tubes. On Thursdays, the Brew’s Molly Liebergall untangles them for you. But…Molly is on vacation IRL, so Abby will disentangle the web this week.

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade—and when life hands you bad reviews, make t-shirts. That lesser-known adage has served the New Bedford Whaling Museum well. The Massachusetts historical center has had trouble keeping the merch it made featuring a negative review of the venue on its shelves ever since the internet got wind of it. The one-star Google review, left by a disappointed visitor in 2020, called the museum the “worst aquarium ever.”

To be clear, at the time, the museum dedicated to the region’s once-prominent whaling industry had no aquarium—but it did have lots of giant whale skeletons. It has since installed a small tank, though no whales swim in it.

That hasn’t stopped online shoppers from scooping up the now viral t-shirts and hoodies bearing the review on the back and a whale skeleton on the front:

The internet’s quest to make the tops the hottest look since whalebone corsets began in November with a TikTok video showcasing them that got 96,000 views.
Last week, an Instagram post announcing a restock was picked up by news outlets, which led to a 250% increase in sales compared to the week prior, the museum told the Associated Press.—AR

Three Headlines and a Lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than a light lunch. Can you spot the odd one out?

Screamers welcome: Chicago scream club lets people ‘give in and let go’
Runners are splurging on $350 shorts and $140 moth-hole tees to look good
Couple includes $5k restaurant-style soda machine during ‘dream’ home build, but didn’t expect it to stir up ‘controversy’
Backpack or purse? Neither—you should be carrying your things loose

Share the Brew

Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag.

Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: 0

Click to Share

Or copy & paste your referral link to others:
morningbrew.com/r/?kid=71df84e8

Answer

We made up the one about carrying your stuff loose.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: adage, meaning “a saying often in metaphorical form that typically embodies a common observation.” Thanks to Laura from Atlanta for teaching us that a suggestion saved is a suggestion earned. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✢ A Note From Cytonics

* Source: The Lancet Rheumatology

This is a paid advertisement for Cytonics’ Regulation CF offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.cytonics.com/.

Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. There is no guarantee of performance. Past performance does not predict future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.

** Phase 1 clinical trials are designed primarily to assess safety and tolerability and do not establish efficacy. Clinical trial results are preliminary, and there can be no assurance that future trials will be successful or that any product candidate will receive regulatory approval.

✳︎ A Note From State Street Investment Management

Before investing, consider the funds’ investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. To obtain a prospectus or summary prospectus which contains this and other information, call 1-866-787-2257 or visit statestreet.com/im. Read it carefully.

Investing involves risk. ALPS Distributors, Inc. (fund distributor); State Street Global Advisors Funds Distributors, LLC (marketing agent).

State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) is now State Street Investment Management. Please click here for more information.

Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, and Holly Van Leuven

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Get smarter in just 5 minutes

Tech & AI News: Tech Brew
Markets News: Brew Markets
Real Estate News: The Playbook
Money & Career: Bossy

Take The Brew to work

Interested in podcasts?

Check out ours here.

ADVERTISE//CAREERS//SHOP//FAQ

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here.
View our privacy policy here.

Copyright © 2026 Morning Brew Inc. All rights reserved.
22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011

☕️ Steady on