http://www.powershares.com/products/overview.aspx?ticker=pkw#sector

but i agree with you, long term stock returns have been dependent on consistent and rising dividends. i guess this is what happens when major shareholders are increasingly activist hedge funds…

But it must be pointed out that in pursuit of fair and balance treatment, its not slam-dunk, for..

…investing in your own shares primes the possibility of stock-for-stock acquisitions on terms more favorable than those prevailing under an even more-languishing stock price sans buyback.

Also, the feedback mechanisms of negative price momentum are vicious: lower market cap = lower index representation = lower passive ownership = excretion from the larger index to the smaller index. Then, the firm (and shareholders) are really exposed to lowball opportunistic bids from trade-buying compets, MBO, or PE.

Also, there is undoubtedl a mixing of firms cynically pursuing financial engineering – i.e. some form of leveraged recaps – from those attempting to return fund to shareholders through buybacks.

Finally, in such studies of underperformance (without pre-judging the results), one needs to control very carefully for growth rates, industry group and other important potentially descriptive factors since the firms conducting buybacks themselves may be a biased subset of low-growth comapnies and/or industries.