The Fed quietly ended Quantitative Tightening after removing about $2.4T from the system since 2022.
Since December 2025, the balance sheet has stopped shrinking and even ticked up slightly—from ~$6.50T to ~$6.71T.
No major announcement, just a shift from draining liquidity to stabilizing it.
Markets tend to react to this kind of change because even small liquidity returns can find their way into stocks and crypto, especially risk assets like small caps.
In short: the brake isn’t being pressed anymore, and liquidity is slowly creeping back in.