Goldman Sachs notes 'buyback aristocrats' in hunt for future outperformers

Goldman A basket of companies that consistently buy back shares is outperforming the broader market, according to Goldman Sachs. So-called "buyback aristocrats" are companies that have reduced their share counts by 1% or more annually in at least nine of the past ten years, David Kostin, Goldman's chief U.S. equity strategist, said in a note Friday. "An equal-weight portfolio of Buyback Aristocrats, reconstituted and rebalanced annually, has outperformed the equal-weight S & P 500 by an annualized average of 3 [percentage points] since 2012 and by 4 pp YTD," he wrote. Like dividends, share repurchases allow companies to return profits to stockholders. They can also imply management confidence in the valuation of a stock, and its performance. On Tuesday, EPAM Systems was the latest company