[pas]

It doesn't "go" to financial institutions, it goes through them. (Of course they make a "healthy" profit. Though it's arguably too much, if this many banks can survive: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184536/number-of-fdic-in... )

So who is buying equity (so stocks)? And one argument is, that "retail investors" are driving this. (So end users, the folks on the WallStreetBets subreddit, and whoever uses RobinHood, or anyone that puts money into a passive index fund: https://www.reddit.com/r/econmonitor/comments/hnohi6/us_equi... )

Also savings increased a lot, since people were not spending (they were staying at home), so where to put the money? They put it into index funds.