Stock buybacks are a major problem in themselves. While once upon a time they did serve a function – using excess cash to buy your own shares when the market has them below what they are worth – these days they are at the expense of prudence and R&D, and are used to boost the share price and get the execs a big juicy bonus for that.
Seeing record buybacks at a time of record profits and corporate greed is not a surprise, because governments are allowing all that.
But what makes it worse, and sickening, is that it is often the execs who are selling the company.
It is almost like a ponzi scheme:
Execs get bonuses in the form of cheap shares > they pump up the share price with buybacks > sell their shares back to the corporation > get bonuses because the share price went up.
In 3 charts we can see that execs are selling more shares, buybacks are increasing, and a big portion of the rise of the overall sharemarket is due to buybacks.
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ponzi-insiders-dump-stocks-own-companies-record-pace