It was just four sentences–“The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. However, the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity. The Federal Reserve is closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook. We will use our tools and act as appropriate to support the economy.”

And with that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell stopped another down day for U.S. stocks from turning into another plunge.

It wasn’t enough to turn red to green for most market indexes–but it did rally the Standard & Poor’s 500 to an end of the day loss of just 0.82% at 2954.22, near the best levels for the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.39% and the Russell 2000 small cap index was lower by 1.43%. But the NASDAQ Composite actually ended in the green, up 0.01%.

As you might expect, bonds rallied in price and sank in yield with the yield on the 10-year Treasury falling to a new low at 1.15%, down 11 basis points. The yield on the 2-year Treasury dropped to below 1% at 0.92%. The yield on the 30-year Treasury set a new all-time low at 1.68%. The 30-year bond has now dropped 1.4 percentage points in the last year.

In the “real” world of commodities, U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate plunged 3.82% to $45.29 a barrel.