Why are stocks going up?

Cus

My understanding is that the investment banks are just a conduit.  The bank of England buys existing bonds from pension funds, insurance companies etc at pretty much any price (via investment banks who act as market makers). Those pension funds, insurance companies etc are long cash and so invest that it equities. (Well a lot of it) so up go equity prices.
There are also commercial banks who can (and have to) hold a certain % of assets (mainly government bonds and cash as they are low risk) as capital for regulatory reasons and so also sell bonds to the BoE at inflated prices. So when they have too much than needed to be stored, they then might as well lend it etc to boost smaller businesses as they cannot earn anything on it sitting in their balance sheet ( as with negative interbank rates they are actually losing money)
So indirectly the whole market ends up awash with cash, which has to go somewhere.
What was unusual during the QE of the GFC in 2008 was that the commercial banks held onto this extra cash to basically look more secure, and with knowledge of incoming new regulations. Hence equities went up, but the economy didnt really improve.  Maybe this time we will see a real distribution of money to small businesses.

bery_451

Because Central Banks Interest rates have been kept low meaning this will put off savers because of rubbish interest rates return in their savings account so people rather take their chances with their cash savings and put it into the stock market otherwise the target 3% annual inflation (figure can change) will eat away at their savings so interest rates in a savings account needs to be at 3% to break-even with you cash savings in a bank account otherwise your cash will lose value annually.

Low interest rates pushes house prices higher because it makes mortgages cheap with low interest rates which attract more buyers and more buyers push prices up. Simple supply & demand economics 101 lesson in any market.

If I was the owner of Lamborghini company and decided to open up a Lamborghini showroom in the run down poor area of the north selling lambos at £250000 each I will hardly get any annual sales apart from the drug dealers who are liquid cash buyers for obvious reasons so I havent met my sales targets so prices of lambos come down because of less demand.
However if I offer low interest rate credit lambos with a 10% deposit then I will sell loads and my sales figures will look good meaning demand is higher pushing prices up of these lambos but when those customers don't pay their monthly payments I go bankrupt and its game over.
Just giving an example   

bermudianmark

The lockdown was already priced in, and now with Brexit cleared up and the vaccines rolling out, the market expects a return to normal some time after end of Feb, so hence prices are rising on the expectation of better times not too far ahead.