[ojbrien]

1. You seem to be implying that there's something wrong with share buybacks but aren't explicitly stating it. I'd be curious to know what your criticism of share buy backs is?

2. Anecdotally, I still think EPS is by far the more widely used metric. EPS numbers can be negative so there's not much use for loss per share numbers, and most public companies have positive earnings.

3. This I agree with, SNAP's lack of voting rights is really concerning and initially SNAP didn't seem to traded at a discount because of that. It's worth noting it's down over 40% from the price it traded on the day it went public, although potentially for other reasons.

I also generally agree that people would be far better off if they educated themselves a little better on what they have their money invested in.

[tardo99]

The issue with share buybacks is they are designed to increase the share price rather than provide a cash return to existing investors. To a common stockholder, the two outcomes are basically the same (minus maybe some tax differences). But to a common optionholder, they are vastly different. Optionholders typically can't benefit from dividends, whereas they do benefit from the share price increasing.

This matters because management is often paid in options. So, managements have an incentive to allocate capital to share buybacks to boost their pay packages instead of reinvesting money in the business. If share buybacks were illegal and the only two options were dividends and keeping the capital in the business, managements might behave very differently.