Uh-oh: Companies Are Stampeding to Buy Back Their Own Stock (Just Like Before the 2008 Crash)

Interesting column in Wall Street on Parade by Pam Martens and Russ Martens. From the link:

. . . Yesterday, both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted record high closing levels with Nasdaq closing above 5,000 – within spitting distance of its old high set 15 years ago. (Yes, it’s been a long tough slog for investors in the Nasdaq index.) And, accompanying this seemingly bullish news for stock investors is a startling assessment this morning of what’s going on behind the scenes with share buybacks from Lu Wang and Oliver Renick at Bloomberg News. Here’s the bullet points of their story:

• Stock buybacks and dividends are eating up “almost all the Standard & Poor’s 500’s earnings”;

• Even with “earnings estimates deteriorating,” corporations have announced “an average of more than $5 billion in buybacks each day.”

• “Companies in the S&P 500 have spent more than…