[eru]

You can play the stock market, and you can put money back into investors pockets.

If you want managers to play the stock market, your comments are spot on--but you shouldn't restrict them to buying only shares of their own company. If they are good at predicting when valuations are high and going lower, or the other way round, you should open an investment fund and profit from their expertise.

Most companies aren't in the business of playing the stock market.

If you just want to transfer money from the company to the stock holders, you can either issue dividends or buy back shares at any time there's excess cash. Apart from taxation issues, there's no difference between share buy-backs and dividends in terms of getting money back to the investors.