{"id":21225,"date":"2016-06-24T05:48:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T10:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21225"},"modified":"2016-06-24T05:48:17","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T10:48:17","slug":"heres-what-fueled-the-rally-in-stocks-since-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21225","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s What Fueled the Rally in Stocks since February"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Here\u2019s What Fueled the Rally in Stocks since February<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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A huge force that\u2019s going to fizzle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have another post-Financial Crisis\u00a0record on our hands!<\/p>\n

Share buybacks by S&P 500 companies during the three-month period of February through April soared 15.1% from a year ago, to $166.3 billion, according to\u00a0FactSet<\/a>, the highest since Q3 2007, which had set an absolute record of $178.5 billion, just as the Financial Crisis was cracking the glossy\u00a0veneer of the banks.<\/p>\n

\"US-share-buybacks-Feb-Apr-2016\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The tech sector, whose revenues have been getting hammered by reality, was the biggest spender at $34.4 billion.<\/p>\n

The healthcare sector was second. When insurers and Big Pharma aren\u2019t busy buying each other in the ongoing mega-merger oligopoly or monopoly boom, they\u2019re buying their own shares. Buybacks over the 3-month period soared to $33.2 billion, an all-time record for the sector, blowing away its prior record of $24.5 billion.<\/p>\n

The biggest buyback spender overall: Pfizer with $8.1 billion. It reduced its outstanding shares by 1.5% year-over-year. It was part of an existing $11-billion buyback program and a new $5-billion program that was announced to make up for debacles elsewhere, such as the collapse of its $160-billion merger with Allergan.<\/p>\n

Gilead was the second biggest spender, more than doubling its buybacks from a year ago to $7.4 billion, which cut its shares outstanding by 8.7% year-over-year, according to FactSet. This was part of its $15 billion repurchase plan, on top of which its board approved another $12 billion.<\/p>\n

Pfizer and Gilead combined repurchased $15.5 billion of their shares in just three months! They pushed Apple, which had dominated the list, down to third place with $7 billion in buybacks.\u00a0A third healthcare company made the list of the top ten buyback-spenders: Express Scripts with\u00a0$3.3 billion, up from zero a year ago.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s What Fueled the Rally in Stocks since February A huge force that\u2019s going to fizzle. We have another post-Financial Crisis\u00a0record on our hands! Share buybacks by S&P 500 companies during the three-month period of February through April soared 15.1% from a year ago, to $166.3 billion, according to\u00a0FactSet, the highest since Q3 2007, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1716,8948,1138,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-21225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-sp-500","tag-share-buybacks","tag-stock-market","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21226,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21225\/revisions\/21226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}