Share buyback boom subsides

The bull market in stocks looks set to lose one of its drivers as companies buy back fewer shares.

US company profits beat expectations in the second quarter of 2014. Companies in the S&P 500 index grew earnings per share (EPS) by 8.4% on average the best quarterly showing in three years.

But dig a bit deeper and the profit picture isn't as robust as it looks. And this is true not just of the recent quarter, but of the entire post-crisis profit rebound.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.