Stock Buybacks Surge As Markets Fall

Stock Buybacks are surging even as markets fall; maybe some managements do actually know what they're doing.

According to a note from Goldman Sachs' Corporate Trading Desk, the bank's corporate buyback trading desk is seeing an uptick in buyback activity as more companies enter their open window and engage in discretionary repurchases, following a slow start to the year. What's really interesting about this revelation is the fact that the buyback desk had its most active day of 2016 on Friday of last week, a day when markets around the world were generally extending their declines of the past few months.

There's plenty of academic research out there which shows that buybacks are usually executed at the worst possible time...