[lithos]

Not really inflation happens where the cash flows. And very little of that cash flowed into normal markets.

On the other hand you can point you can look at the stock market still increasing/staying level in COVID, to figure out where inflation hit first. (Markets up in a lockdown, sounds impossible).

Right now inflation is hitting low end markets through that cash finally hitting normal markets with the wealthy trying to hedge with land/properties, and wage increases.

[uup]

A lot of money did end up in normal markets. There is a lot of data for this. For instance, the Fed offers something called a reverse repo facility that allows institutions to deposit money overnight at the Fed. This is typically leveraged by money market funds. Over the course of the pandemic, the amount of reverse repo operations grew from 0 to over $2T.

A lot of the expansion was done via Covid stimulus, which put money directly into the hands of businesses and individuals. Unsurprisingly, people spent this money on all types of stuff, including equities and real estate.