by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Who’s going to replace that “relentless bid?”
In 2015, S&P 500 companies bought back $569 billion of their own shares, down just a smidgen from $572 billion in 2014, according to FactSet. That’s a combined $1.14 trillion in stock repurchases. With the S&P 500 market capitalization at $18.8 trillion currently, corporate buybacks over the past two years have mopped up about 6% of the total float in dollar terms. And this has been happening year after year with increasing vehemence since 2010.