Wolfe Research published a list of companies that buy back their own shares and pay dividends. The groundbreaking criteria: they've been doing it for ten years. A decade. The same amount of time it takes a child to go from kindergarten to sophomore year. This is the bar.
The firm calls this "playing defense." Buying shares that companies themselves want to own. Revolutionary stuff. Next they'll recommend drinking water when thirsty.
Here's what happened. Some analyst looked at a database. Filtered for buybacks spanning 2016 to 2026. Added dividend payers to the mix. Sent it to CNBC. CNBC published it. Retail traders read it. Retail traders think they've discovered a secret passage in a Mario level everyone's known about since 1987.
The ten-year track record matters because apparently if a company bought back shares for nine years and eleven months, they might be frauds. But cross that decade threshold? Lock it in. Put the kids' college fund on it. The calendar has spoken.
Wolfe Research could've set the threshold at five years. Or fifteen. Or "companies whose CEO's middle name starts with a vowel." The number is arbitrary. The track record is backward-looking. The stock price already reflects every buyback and dividend these companies executed. But sure, let's call it defense.
Defense implies protection. Protection implies risk mitigation. Risk mitigation implies these stocks won't crater the second the board decides buybacks are expensive and dividends are negotiable. Companies that repurchase shares for a decade don't do it out of loyalty to you. They do it because their stock was cheap or their tax attorneys got creative or they had nothing better to do with the cash.
The moment any of those variables change, your "defensive" position becomes a live grenade with a Wolfe Research logo stamped on the pin.
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