It seems like just about every day I read an article about Apple’s cash hoard and what they should do with it. Yesterday they announced that they would be executing a stock buyback, or, put another way, require that just about everyone buy some AAPL stock at $400 or so. Seriously – when one considers mutual funds owning Apple stock, I would bet that just about everyone in the U.S. who owns any kind of company equity owns some.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/apple-good-bad-rotten-115009507.html?vp=1

And how have the results been with Apple’s existing stock buyback?

Apple’s existing buyback program was launched October 1st of last year. Since then, the company has spent $1.95B buying shares at an average cost of $478. The stock has fallen more than 40% since the buyback went live and shares purchased have lost 15% of their value.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Apple would just give us our money in dividends, instead of “investing” it for us in Apple stock? I understand there are tax implications, etc, etc but when we buy Apple stock we fundamentally want the company to produce earnings for us. We shouldn’t be forced to re-invest those earnings in the company.