SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)

[tw0122]

No market crashes this year in S&P. At the current pace, 2018 will mark the first year that corporate buybacks and dividends top the $trillion mark. Buy back stock is the name of the game to disguise any bad earnings.

As I’ve said before buybacks increase earnings, which pushes the stock up to make executives options more valuable unless you are a small company who needs options to be able to compete for top talent, gigantic buybacks are extremely hard to justify. Instead of using debt for research and development, buying new equipment, and hiring new workers to increase market share, corporate America keeps taking on massive debt to line their own greedy pockets so that when the downturn comes, the first thing they’ll do is to start laying people off.