Stock buybacks to boost earnings per share (via fewer shares) are papering over financial collapse...so insiders can cash out en masse ahead of the inevitable stampede...
Remember this week's poster child for corporate greed - Schlumberger, and their $10 billion stock buyback paid for with 10,000 job cuts?
The stock was up 6% on short-covering - each rally of shorter duration.
Ready for vertical mode:
The oil services sector has been the hardest hit by the oil price, since these companies are massively leveraged to collapsing investment. They support exploration, drilling, and oil rigs. The rig count is at a six year low.
The last time oil was at these levels, meaning higher than these levels, was in 2009, and there were no stock buybacks being announced back then...
Oil closed BELOW 2009 levels:
There is no sign of selling capitulation because oil industry "experts", all of whom are on the verge of losing their jobs and becoming bag boys at the supermarket, all desperately expect the oil price decline to be temporary...
The oil services ETF is approaching 2009 lows, on no volume. Far less volume than 2011, or even a year ago...
Oil services / price of oil:
Oil services stocks have some catching down to do...
Exxon is even more overvalued, because that's where the oil bulls are hiding when they rotate out of frackers on short-covering bounces...
Exxon: $WTIC: We've seen this movie before
Oil is ahead of the stock market, because not only is the S&P in denial, but the entire Energy sector is in denial...
Exxon's bounces are dwindling...
