Why companies spend a trillion dollars erasing their own shares.
In 2024, S&P 500 companies spent a record $942 billion buying back their own stock. Apple alone spent more than $100 billion. To anyone outside finance, the practice sounds paradoxical: a company uses real cash to make itself smaller. Here is what is actually happening, why CFOs prefer it to paying dividends, and what changed when Washington put a 1 percent toll on it.
