After Meta announced a $50 billion buyback, its stock price rose 15% after hours, quarterly profits more than tripled, and it announced its first dividend and a $50 billion stock buyback.

In order to increase the stock price, Meta has come up with two major strategies, dividends and buybacks. In fact, Meta also bought back last year, and Apple is also constantly buying back shares. This shows that these companies cannot find their future and dare not spend money. Repurchasing stocks, after all, shareholders are not afraid of high stock prices, but are afraid that they will not rise.

Apple repurchased US$90 billion last year and continued to drive up its stock price. If CEOs in the United States want to obtain excess returns, raising prices is probably the only option. After all, most CEOs' main compensation comes from stocks. Recently, Musk has been complaining about the issue of control. Mainly because he feels that Tesla has contributed a lot of new businesses, which will be unlimited in the future, such as humanoid robots, cybertrucks, etc., but his shares only account for 13%. This time Tesla A Washington state court declared Musk's $55 billion share award invalid, forcing him to return his shares. Lao Ma is most afraid of losing control. He keeps spreading the news and saying that if he loses control of Tesla, he will sell out of Tesla shares and start a new business.

Xiao Zha fully controls Meta through AB shares. Although the company shares he holds are similar to Lao Ma, Xiao Zha arranged AB shares in advance. He has about 53% of the total voting rights and has absolute control over Meta. This The point is what Lao Ma envies most, that is, Xiao Zha's descendants can control Meta forever, so they use cash to buy back stocks, and Xiao Zha himself is one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Two years ago, Xiao Zha announced All in Metaverse, but it suffered a huge loss. The company laid off more than 10,000 people. At present, Metaverse is still too far away from making money. In the second half of last year, Xiao Zha announced All in AI, but there is still time for AI products to truly make money. There is a long way to go. In order to stabilize the stock price, Xiao Zha also spent all his money.

The three major U.S. technology companies have been bearish for a long time. Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are operating counter-cyclically. We continue to be optimistic about Microsoft.

Buffett has been continuously repurchasing Berkshire Hathaway's shares in the past two years. Hathaway has a lot of cash on its books, as much as hundreds of billions of dollars. However, Buffett did not buy the bottom of U.S. stocks. The main reason is that he feels that the current U.S. economic outlook is not good, so investment The risk is very high. Instead of doing this, it is better to repurchase the company's shares. I remember Buffett said this:

Warren Buffett: By far the best investment is in yourself. **For example, a person’s communication skills. I tell those students that when they graduate and walk out of campus, the business courses, various formulas, and other things they learned on campus, (are not enough). If you can learn communication skills including interpersonal and written aspects, the value can be increased by at least 50%.

From the above paragraph, it is not difficult to see the reason why Buffett keeps repurchasing shares of Hathaway. In fact, it is very simple. There is no better investment target in the market. Instead of buying stocks with no potential, it is better to repurchase the shares of his own company. . Maybe, deep down in his heart, Buffett thinks that U.S. stocks are not worth buying now. After all, stocks without huge potential in his capital have no meaning to him. U.S. stocks have been at high levels in recent years, so he may still be waiting for opportunities. I'm thinking that Buffett, who is over 90 years old, can still patiently wait for opportunities and choose investment targets carefully. This is not something ordinary people can do.

Facebook has been beaten to a pulp by TikTok, and Amazon is also facing constant challenges from Temu. Unless they can convince the US government to use the power of the state to ban TikTok and Temu, Meta and Amazon will definitely not be able to defeat TikTok and Temu in the long run. Chinese company.

Google advertising mainly comes from search, and the chatgpt generative question and answer service is the gravedigger of search. In the future, Google’s search advertising business will gradually collapse. The gears of fate have begun. Google’s current growth is just inertia.