By coinnews 
00:00 Brad Smith
Time now for our chart of the day. Let’s send it over to Madison Mills for a look at why corporate America is bullish on the stock market, Maddie.
00:08 Maddie
That’s exactly right, Brad. So, taking a look at corporate buybacks. This is what it sounds like when corporate America buys back some of its own shares and companies hitting a record high. We’re on track for the second biggest monthly gains in corporate buybacks since the mid 1980s. Take a look at this chart here behind me. You can see the increase that we have had here, and that is on a monthly basis, that stat that I just pointed out, but you can see for the first quarter of 2025 we are nearing over $500 billion of corporate buybacks. The month of April seeing over $230 billion in buybacks, making up half of the gains that you’re seeing on the screen behind me. So a couple of different takeaways for investors here on the one hand, when companies are buying back stock that can be seen as a positive catalyst because that means that companies aren’t going to let their own share prices suffer too much off the back of any macro headwinds. We’re facing a lot of those right now, right? But then there’s a question. Is that the best use of company’s money on the balance sheet to be buying back some of their own stock and also what happens if that money goes to waste? Does it overinflate stock prices and make valuations get a little bit unattractive? That is the question on a stock-by-stock basis. And also question about whether or not the levels that we’re seeing in the market right now, especially off the back of a little bit of a recent recovery rally are those levels really an accurate picture of sentiment on the market when we know that sentiment amongst investors has still been a little bit bearish or is it something like buybacks and maybe some hedge fund leveraging and repositioning, making the market look a little bit better than it might be under the surface, Brad?
02:37 Brad Smith
Yeah, it comes after an annual record for buybacks of $942 and a half billion dollars according to the S&P last year, Maddie.