Large Buybacks Outperform S&P 500 by 5 Percent Per Annum

Buybacks have outperformed the market for most of the last twenty years, but total shareholder return has been even more important, according to research from the Goldman Sachs Portfolio Strategy team. They found that the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) has doubled buybacks over the last decade and that companies involved in large buybacks beat the market by an average of 5.3 percent per year for the last two decades, and that choosing stocks based on tot cash returns (buybacks plus dividend yields) averaged 6.2 outperformance per year.

Shareholder yield beat the market

“Those with the largest buyback programs have led the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) by 970 bp in 2013, while those with the highest total shareholder yields have beaten the...