So you buy back shares when they are at the 52 week high and sell more shares when they are at the 52 week low... that's brilliant.
Share buybacks make sense for companies with strong balance sheets and little/ no debt load. For example: Apple. They make zero sense for companies with weak balance sheets and tons of debts (e.g. Most of the airlines).
All this "we are doing it for shareholders" tripe is nonsense. Buying back stock at all time highs is the most idiotic thing a company can do because it says the business has no better use for said money, which imo is one of the dumbest conclusions a company can come to if growth is the goal (is your R&D department so useless that giving the money back to shareholders is the best allocation choice? Silly)....I'm including companies with a huge war chest like Apple, they are not an exception to this truth.
Many companies (run by idiots) have concluded that financial engineering is more useful than R&D, these badly managed companies should be left right in front of the "market firing squad" when the market turns against them inevitably... No bailouts.