4 Big Tech giants have plowed over $1 trillion into stock buybacks in 10 years — more than Tesla or Meta’s entire market value::Apple poured over $600 billion into buybacks in the decade to March 31, exceeding Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta’s combined spending.
Your example would be manipulating for the company. Stock buybacks primarily manipulate for the execs and large shareholders. Even though they have reporting requirements, they benefit from the general increases in price.
If the company wants to give money to shareholders, they could do that in the form of dividends.
No one is being manipulated. The company is handing the stockholders their own profits. Dividends are the same thing, just taxed differently.