As over 80% of S&P 500 (^GSPC) companies have reported their results for the first quarter of 2024, some trends have begun to emerge from the data. One striking data point is that stock buybacks have increased 16% year-over-year to $182.1 billion. What does this signal for big businesses and the overall market?

Yahoo Finance Anchors Madison Mills and Seana Smith discuss the latest market developments and the companies that have announced stock buybacks.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

All right, let's talk about one of our big takeaways here from the show and really what we have seen play out over the last 24 hours and that is first quarter earnings season.We are in the final stretch.Some of the focus that we've been talking about.We talked about it with, uh, Scott's, uh, Kroner over at city earlier here this morning has been on buybacks and the uptick that we have seen in buyback specifically this quarter and just to put it even more, uh, plainly here, put it, uh, very, uh, I guess, right?Tell you exactly what this means here.When you compare it on your rear basis, we're actually looking at the fact that buybacks have ticked up, I believe just around 16% compared to what we saw a year ago.100 and $81.2 billion worth of buybacks have been disclosed here for the first quarter of results.So what does this mean?Obviously, the signals that executives are confident within their company and this comes at a critical time here when there is so much uncertainty when you talk about the economy and exactly what is going to happen with the fed moving forward.But what we heard from Scott Croner over at Citi was he was talking about the fact that they're actually looking for a free cash flow here to rise by about to grow by about 10% this year, giving companies more choices when they have more choices.A lot of them are putting that money to work through buybacks.And ultimately, what that means in terms of further supporting here, the market from current levels.I wrote that number down, I was thrown off by 10%.That just seemed like a lot, particularly given his thesis that this season is gonna be a beat then hold because we're seeing good results, they were not necessarily see stocks rallying off of those results.So I thought that was super interesting, a great point for you to bring up.Sha I also thought that what he said about how buybacks are another part of what's leading to the bifurcation in the consumer was interesting that those consumers that have the ability to have holdings in apple, for example, and they're getting the benefits of those buybacks that's giving them some form of income.Whereas on the lower end of the spectrum, we're seeing that people who are impacted by hire for longer environment, that's their credit a little bit more expensive.And that's part of the dynamic that's leading to the separation here.Yeah, exactly.We take into account why this is happening clearly that bullish signal that it is sending to the markets.And as a result, we see many of these companies who have announced buybacks seen to tick up in their stock here the following day.And then even over consecutive trading days here, not necessarily a big surprise, but again, a trend that we have been noticing here at Yahoo Finance and certainly something that you wanna keep on your radar as we close out first quarter earnings season.