The Buyback Blackout Period Begins

The market's stubborn meltup over the past month has caught many bears by surprise, but one of the pillars of the recent mini-boom which has pushed stocks to just about 10% away from new all time highs, is about to be yanked away: we are entering the customary stock buyback blackout period ahead of the coming Q3 earnings releases.

According to Goldman's Vani Ranganath, the next blackout window begins at the end of this week on Friday, Sept 15 (which is also the 15th anniversary of the Lehman collapse... in case you needed another reason to feel old). That's when roughly 50% of the companies in the S&P 500 are estimated to be in closed window (Goldman estimates blackout begins ~4-6 weeks ahead of a company's earnings release so we will likely start to see a decline in activity this week). As a reminder, the Goldman buyback desk sees ~30-35% decline in volume during blackout. On the authorization front, 2023 YTD authorizations stand at $789B, the second most active year YTD.