[daneyh]

>just criticizing companies who do stock buybacks to artificially inflate their share price in a down market. My argument has nothing to do with profits or dividends or ownership, just share price.

There is nothing inherently wrong with performing stock buybacks, from a cashflow perspective it is equivalent of paying a dividend, in fact it can be prudent from a tax perspective. You did imply that it is a continuous process when you suggested:

> when the money runs out, the buybacks stop

Performing a stock buyback based off the proceeds of debt in a down market makes perfect sense actually because you can significantly reduce your cost of capital if you believe your future cashflow will be strong enough to continue making coupon payments. You can issue debt at say 3.5% and buy out shares that require 7% cost of capital and as long as interest rate and credit risk don't drastically deteriorate significantly increase the value of your company from a simple capital markets operation.

[freehunter]

If that's what people understood as implied, it was not what I meant to imply and I apologize. What I meant by that was, you can only buy back stocks up until the point where you run out of money. Not that you HAVE to, but if your goal is to manipulate your share price, you can only do it up to the point where you're out of money. If I'm spending money from my savings account, there is no law saying I have to spend all the money in my savings account, just a law saying I can only spent up to the balance in my savings account.

I guess you assumed I was arguing that companies who do buybacks must dump all of their money into buybacks, which I certainly did not mean to imply. Big difference between "able to" and "must".

The point is, if you as a company are trying to manipulate your share price in a down market by buying back stocks and you choose to continue buying your stock until the market rises again, you're taking the risk that you will run out of money before the stock market rises again. At that point your share prices fall no matter what.

[matt4077]

> I guess you assumed I was arguing that companies who do buybacks must dump all of their money

No, wrong again. People take issue with your representation of stock buybacks as "short-term market manipulation". The major effect of buybacks comes not (just) from the increase in demand, but from lowering the denominator future profits are divided by. It directly increases earnings per share.

[freehunter]

Okay I am done with this thread and everyone (what I can only assume is intentionally) putting words in my mouth that I never said, while ignoring words that I did say.

I never said companies must spend all their money on stock buybacks, yet that argument is being used to paint me like an idiot.

I never said every company who does buybacks is doing it to manipulate the market, yet that argument is being used to paint me like an idiot.

I never said anything about dividends or profits or ownership, in fact I literally said I'm just criticizing companies who do buybacks in order to increase their share price during a down market, yet the argument that "not everyone who does buybacks is manipulating the market" keeps getting thrown at me like that thought has never crossed my mind. I know you think I'm an idiot but I did say words that have meaning and I used those words intentionally to convey the exact meaning that society has agreed those words are supposed to mean. It is not my fault you intentionally choose to ignore those words and their meaning.

I've had enough of it. Either read my words then comment or don't comment at all. I'm sick of this, defending my comments against people who only have bad faith and want to pretend that they're smarter than me because they purposefully misread my comments.

Your entire argument is based on an intentional misreading of words I never said and in direct response to the comment where I argued against that intentional misinterpretation and I'm not engaging with this any more.