Unlike dividends, this channel of return seems distributed according to shareholder's trading savvy. It's often said that a company is overpaying for its share

Unlike dividends, this channel of return seems distributed according to shareholder's trading savvy. It's often said that a company is overpaying for its shares (1) but the phenomenon minus narrative often seems that the company is intentionally playing the losing side of the trade to offer up value to shareholders who sell. This makes it an active exercise to capture that value, compared to a rule-allocated return like dividends. Another interesting thing is that this form of buyback return channel would seem to exclude passive index funds unless they were actively shrinking (i.e. selling). (1) Example from this morning talking how GE bought $30B of shares and later tanked. That's a pretty significant although unequally distributed return of value to those shareholders who sold vs. those still owning GE. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/general-electric-company-stock-gone-184740841.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/general-electric-company-stoc... > They call it “returning money to shareholders.” I call it “wasting shareholder money,” because they almost always buy at prices that are too high