FYI: Are stock buybacks the work of the devil? One of the longstanding raps on buybacks is that they siphon off corporate dollars that are better used to build up businesses, outlays known as capital expenditures, or capex.
Now we have some numbers that demonstrate Corporate America prefers to spend on buybacks, at least for the first half of 2018, according to Standard & Poor’s. Through June 30, buybacks for S&P 500 companies were $367 billion, while capex totaled $317 billion. In recent years, the two expenditures were fairly close.
Regards,
Ted
