In tonight’s episode of The Gentle Ledger, we drift through a quieter market landscape after a week of sharp turns. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 all closed higher, but the gains felt more like an exhale than a surge. We’ll move gently through sectors — from tech’s fragile optimism around Alphabet and Meta, to cautious tremors in semiconductors and AI, to the steady heartbeat of financials and consumer names like McDonald’s. Across the Pacific, Asia’s markets echoed that same pause, while Europe settled into reflective stillness. Gold glimmered just below $4,000 an ounce, oil softened, and Bitcoin hovered above $104,000 after its own bout of volatility. As always, we close with a soft reflection — on the rhythm between exuberance and restraint, and on how the world’s markets seem to breathe in unison.