@rbreich I’d like to hear your academic argument against stock buybacks, one that wasn’t playing to the peanut gallery.
Clearly companies are supposed to return money to shareholders, via dividends or reducing share counts. That’s why people buy shares. Would you just prefer it be dividends?
@rbreich I had to look up "stock buybacks" because I'd never heard of it before. The blah-blah-whatever from Forbes Advisor on this makes no sense. Buying back one's own stocks just makes a company look desperate, and also, stupid. Not "more valuable" or whatever. What the H?
@rbreich
If Boeing hadn't spent $7billion on stock buybacks but instead had paid out $7billion in dividends, would the results have been any different?
Buybacks are a way of increasing the return to investors (not just the CEO) by increasing the price of shares), and dividends are theoretically taxed at about the same rate as capital gains.
The problem seems to be profits over safety and product quality rather than buybacks themselves.
@rbreich Beyond market manipulation, stock buybacks are also tax evasion: they allow shareholders to recognize long-term capital gains and to control the timing of such gains (e.g. to match them with tax loss harvesting).