If you're in the stock market, beware January

finance.yahoo.com

By Sam Ro

Since the financial crisis, S&P 500 companies have spent trillions of dollars buying back shares of their own stock. In the third quarter alone, these companies gobbled up $156 billion worth of themselves.

Goldman Sachs' David Kostin estimates that these companies will spend another $608 billion in 2016 buying back shares, up from $568 billion in 2015.

It's important to note that these buybacks — which are enormous enough to sway markets — don't occur evenly throughout the year.

"Typically, we have a huge tailwind in December from buyback action," JonesTrading's Dave Lutz observed on Thursday. "Fascinating: November/December has combined for almost 23% of annual buyback budgets from '07-'14(ex-'08)."

Lutz referred to a chart, which he recently identified as one of the "Most Important Charts In The World," showing what percentage of annual repurchase spending occurs in each month.

"Beware January?" he asked.

"As volumes decline, market performance appears more vulnerable to the seasonality of buyback activity," Goldman Sachs' Amanda Sneider observed in a note to clients in March.

"This tailwind vanishes quickly, as January only has 3% of the total buyback allotments spent," Lutz noted. "Watch out for [PowerShares Buyback Achievers ETF PKW] underperformance in the early months of 2016 — Buybacks collapse in January."

on.cc東網專訊

【on.cc東網專訊】 據外國傳媒報道，自金融海嘯以來，標指的500大企業花了萬億美元回購股份，單在今年第3季，就已經涉及1,560億美元。高盛估計，2016年的總回購額達6,080億美元，較今年5,680億美元更多。
 

一般來說，回購股份有穩定股價的作用，對股市有利。有數據顯示，除了2008年金融海嘯高峰期外，在2007至2014年間，企業於11至12月回購股份佔全年總量23%，故12月股市通常都處於順風，甚少大跌。不過，1月則要小心，因回購量是全年最少，佔比僅3%(本文附圖)，恐怕將令股市表現差於全年平均水平。