Hmm, so the reasons given for the price going up seem to be: 1. It signals to investors that the company is confident and low risk. (Research and development i

Hmm, so the reasons given for the price going up seem to be: 1. It signals to investors that the company is confident and low risk. (Research and development is considered high risk.) 2. It makes the company more purely itself, it doesn't have shares backed by cash that drag back its price growth. If people expect future growth this means that growth per share will be higher, so they would start buying now to get some of that future higher growth. (Of course in addition to magnifying growth it also magnifies decline.) An interesting thing is that this article says > Stock buybacks can have a mildly positive effect on the economy overall. Which seems to contradict what that previous article said. This article also says that stock buybacks will cause other companies to do more research and development.