Apple Buybacks Pay Most Ever as CEOs Spend $211 Billion
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With Apple Inc.’s repurchases staking a claim as the most profitable on record, buybacks remain one of America’s most popular antidotes to bears.
The iPhone maker is up 25 percent since it spent $18 billion on its own shares between January and March and rallied 32 percent after a $16 billion buyback in 2013. Those are the highest four-month returns among the 20 biggest quarterly repurchases by any company since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Standard & Poor’s. S&P 500 constituents have spent $211 billion on their own stock this year amid concern the five-year bull market is prone to selloffs such as last week’s 2.7 percent retreat.