Free Republic

Most people assume what has kept the market afloat this year after sinking 11% at the start of the year was a mixture of better news out of China, oil prices stabilizing, and indications that the Fed won’t raise rates as much as thought. But the real thing bouying the market could be something else: Stock buybacks. “Corporate repurchases are the main source of net demand for US stocks,” a team of Goldman Sachs analysts led by David Kostin noted in report out on Friday. Demand stemming from stock buybacks will help push up share prices—boosting the S&P 500 to...

It is one of the great investment conundrums of our time: Why do so many stockholders cheer when a company announces that it’s buying back shares? Stated simply, repurchase programs can be hazardous to a company’s long-term financial health and often signal a management that has run out of better ways to invest in the business. And yet investors love them. Not all stock repurchases are bad, of course. But given the enormous popularity of buybacks nowadays, those that are harmful probably outnumber the beneficial. Those who run companies like buybacks because they make their earnings look better on a...

As CEO, she lobbied for a tax holiday on corporate profits to create jobs. Instead, the money was used to buy back stock while HP fired 14,500 workers. Had Donald Trump been talking about Carly Fiorina’s essence rather than her appearance, he might have had a point. Not that it should matter one way or the other, Fiorina has an altogether pleasant physical presence, markedly more so than does Trump. But a blind person could see that Fiorina was the very face of corporate greed and income inequality during her five-year tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Take, for example, the...

Video game retailer GameStop said Wednesday it will enhance shareholder value by launching a new buy-back initiative and authorizing $500 million in new repurchase funds. Read more: GameStop OKs $500M in buyback funds - Dallas Business Journal