The past two days have been extremely profitable for day traders.

I don't really think about the reasons why the market moved in such a way b/c they don't really have predictive value but I think the past two days are enough of a special case to warrant a discussion about why the moves have been so extreme the past two days.

I'm surprised there's no discussion here about this yet.

Some people are blaming algos, pension funds rebalancing, or straight up manipulation by the PPT (assuming a PPT even exists), etc. Honestly, I straight up do not know why and it's not like it really affects my trading in a negative way but I'm interested in what people much smarter than me like Fattails think about why the moves the past 2 days were so extreme.

I saw an interesting comment on reddit which could explain the sharp surge after 2pm EST today:

"A quick note about the mechanics of the NYSE might be helpful.

At the end of each trading day (4 PM), the NYSE conduct an auction on each and every stock. The closing price of the day is calculated from the results of this auction.

Many large buyers and sellers mainly trade via the closing auction. When you put money into a mutual fund, for example, they usually try to calculate the shares via the closing price of the day the next day. To make sure that they actually buy at the closing price, many funds will put in orders for the closing auction and not trade at other times.

To avoid any huge jumps in prices from normal trading to the auction, the NYSE will start publishing information about imbalances in auction orders at 2 PM eastern, so that people can start adjusting.

Today, the market bottomed and started soaring at precisely 2 PM. My best guess is that some pension fund or mutual fund is massively buying, possibly from retail investors buying the dip. My understanding is that if you dump a lot of money into Vanguard's S&P 500 index mutual fund (not the ETF), Vanguard will put in an order to buy in the closing auction the next day."