03-21-2016, 10:35 AM
I really wrestle with this. Sometimes I can almost be convinced that buybacks are evil from a national economic perspective, but not quite. I am fairly convinced that companies often time their buybacks poorly, and that is a shame, but it does not convince me that buyback are bad in theory. Would I rather just get a larger dividend? Probably. But I understand and appreciate that buybacks preserve the company's flexibility in a way that increasing the dividend does not.