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The article makes some great points, and more people should read about Piketty's research on wealth concentration. But it buries the fact that buybacks have act
by btown 9y ago
The article makes some great points, and more people should read about Piketty's research on wealth concentration. But it buries the fact that buybacks have actually been decreasing by certain metrics [0].
Granted, much of this slowdown is due to Apple waiting for tax law changes before moving money around. But an article that uses six-year-old statistics as its lede, but doesn't even reference recent trends, should raise red flags about its impartiality.
[0] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sp-500-buybacks-have-dropped-by-25-since-the-first-quarter-of-2016-2017-09-18 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sp-500-buybacks-have-droppe...
- vitus 9y agoWorth noting: article is from 2014. It's unfair to ask it to cite trends that started after the date of publication (and likely after the finalization of the research, which probably dates closer to 2012, the cited end date in the article).
- btown 9y agoAh! I've been so spoiled by the moderation on HN that when I see an article that doesn't have e.g. (2014) in the title, I assume it's recent! You're absolutely right.
- quizme2000 9y agoIt seems there is an uptick in news stories in general about stock buybacks. With the Bush tax holiday, corps bought back $70B in stock out of the $223B that was repatriated. Even a rookie accountant would see the value of holding offshore profits until another tax holiday (now estimated to be $2T). Thus starting a cycle that is the biggest tax shelter in corporate tax history. The odds are pretty good that of the 3 goals of the trump tax plan, only the tax holiday will pass. So we can expect to see around $700B in stock buyback and the rest will pay dividends to keep stock prices from correcting the current %25 over inflated stock price caused by the tax holiday plan.