After navigating a quiet end to money-market trading in 2019—greased by a massive wave of central bank liquidity—the Federal Reserve Bank of New York injected a modest amount of money into financial markets on Thursday.

In two separate operations, the New York Fed added $56.72 billion to financial markets via repurchase-agreement, or repo, operations. One was via a $29.05 billion overnight repo, and the other was via a $27.67 billion 14-day repo. Eligible banks, known as primary dealers, took far less liquidity from the Fed...