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I can remember as a youngster my dad, who used to own an Esso (later to become Exxon) gas station, complaining during a time when prices were rising very fast, for one reason or another. The problem was that when he would sell out of the current stock of gasoline he had in the ground, the prices increased so fast that the money earned from selling the gasoline at today's price was not enough to pay to get the tanks refilled tomorrow or next week. So gasoline retailers were forced to have to speculate on the future prices, and price the current stock of gasoline accordingly so they could afford to stay in business. If they guessed too low, they chance winding up just breaking even, with just enough "profit" to pay for the next load of gasoline. Or even losing money for every delivery. So prices would jump tremendously at the pumps because the retailers HAD to do it that way. They had no way of knowing what the gasoline would cost tomorrow, next day, or next month, so they had to work off of worst case predictions or go out of business in a hurry.
This would happen all the way up the chain of production, and you can see how it would snowball in a hurry.
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