Normally the most liquid investment in the world is US Treasuries. But the buyers and sellers started to move apart, creating a wider gap between them. Volume was drying up - the market was malfunctioning.
The Fed stepped in to provide liquidity, to buy US Treasuries that everyone wants to sell. If you look at the graph of today's market, the U.S. market was down about -8% for a few hours, then suddenly popped upwards to -5%. That pop was caused by the Fed's action - I watched it in real time, as the US Treasury guy at CNBC reported it in real time, as a new update.
So it means a malfunction has been fixed. For me, that also means the Fed has intervened twice outside of their normal meetings recently (the 0.50% rate cut, now 1.5T of liquidity). And the U.S. stock market has triggered two market halts by dropping -7% during one day's trading. That's at least a fairly definitive signal this isn't normal market activity, given how rarely any of those events happen.
