Companies have been shoveling $4 in the form of share buybacks. This trend has sparked outrage among those who believe companies could do better by the economy - and even shareholders - $4.
The critics might have you believe that almost every company in the market is partaking in what would be a massive buyout of stocks.
Goldman Sachs' Stuart Kaiser offers some context.
"Over the past decade S&P 500 companies have completed gross buybacks totaling 3% of market cap per year on average with 85% of companies engaging in some amount of buyback," wrote Kaiser in a new research note to clients. "That rate of buybacks is nearly double the 1.5% annual pace during the previous ten years from 1994 - 2004. At the sector level the largest gross buybacks have been in Information Technology, Industrials, Health Care, and Consumer Discretionary companies."
Here's Kaiser's research charted.
![buybacks](https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53402a696bb3f7fa2a030178-1200-750/screen-shot-2014-04-05-at-12.01.19-pm.jpg)
Goldman Sachs
Keep in mind that the chart above only communicates share volumes. Because the S&P 500 rose 30% in 2013, corporations actually increased the money spent on buybacks by a massive amount.
"S&P 500 companies repurchased $476 bn of equity in 2013 representing 19% growth vs. 2012," said Kaiser. "We forecast nearly $600 bn of buyback activity in 2014 for 23% growth this year."
Share buybacks mean lower share counts, which should inflate earnings per share (EPS) - all things being equal.
But lower share counts have actually been $4. JP Morgan Funds' David Kelly illustrated this earlier this week in his $4. The tiny brown bars show how changing share counts have helped EPS growth.