I am sure you are, like me, tired of hearing about the "resilience of the American consumer", but what about the American businesses!
The graph below show the delinquencies of business loans, as a percentage of the the number of businesse and also the FED rate. Note how every time the delinquencies went up, the FED had to rush to lower the interest rate. That is because most these business are Ponzi scams. They count on new cheaper and bigger loans to pay the old ones and keep the Ponzi going. But there are two thigs that are worth noting. (1) - That the FEDs rate has gone down to zero already, so there is no more "easier and cheaper loans". (2) The FEDs have started to raise rate and did so very quickly and aggressively in historical sense. So far the delinquencies have held steady, but the question is for how long?
For companies to buy back their stocks, they must have cash to spend and they must have also satisfied the legal requirements. That being internal approval and filling with the SEC as well. Below is a chart of how much cash companie are holding in general. So this chart help has identify if we are going to see buyback activities or not. But for a given company one needs to understand that company's financial sitution in details.