Biggest buyers back to stocking shares

NEW YORK — The biggest buyers of stocks are coming back.

More than any other group, companies themselves are the largest purchasers of their own shares. But they were notably absent from the market the last few weeks, just as stock prices were tumbling on worries about global trade and rising interest rates.

Businesses were holding back on repurchases the past few weeks because they were in one of their “blackout” periods for buybacks, a regular occurrence leading up to the release of their quarterly results. Now that most companies in the S&P 500 index have given their third-quarter reports, blackouts are lifting, and analysts across Wall Street say the return of those buyers should help support the market.

“There’s been a quiet period on buybacks, and the indication is that next month we’re going to have four times as many buybacks as we had” in October, said Marina Severinovsky, investment strategist at Schroders.

The dollar amounts are huge, a result of the record profits that companies have been producing thanks in part to lower tax bills. Corporations in the S&P 500 index may buy back up to $1 trillion of their own stock this year, some analysts estimate. Last year, S&P 500 companies repurchased $519.4 billion of their stock, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.