By Jeff Weniger, CFA, Director, Asset Allocation
Take a look at this tweet.
Figure 1: The One about the Airlines
If you're on Twitter enough, you've seen some variation of this. Personally, I think I came across it 50 different times from 50 different Twitter accounts. Companies that bought back stock, then turned around and accepted government bailouts, were not treated kindly. In the 12 months to May, the $27.5 trillion worth of companies in the S&P 500 Index distributed $522 billion in dividends, but that was actually lower than the buyback total (figure 2).