The timing changes everything. In a wash sale I immediately churn the asset with successively higher “selling” prices. In a buyback, the sale was many years ago, to someone else in the market. That’s makes all the difference.
Just like if I buy a share of AAPL in 2007, sell it in 2011, buy another one in 2015, and sell that one in 2023. I did absolutely no wash trading. I just entered and exited a position a couple of times.
Buy backs are a one-way event. They’re not a loop for the purposes of artificially increasing market cap. If the company decides to offer new shares for sale in five years, that doesn’t mean some sort of loop is formed. That’s a separate event.
Wash trading aims to increase (apparent) market cap by creating trades through insincere activities.
Just like if I buy a share of AAPL in 2007, sell it in 2011, buy another one in 2015, and sell that one in 2023. I did absolutely no wash trading. I just entered and exited a position a couple of times.
Buy backs are a one-way event. They’re not a loop for the purposes of artificially increasing market cap. If the company decides to offer new shares for sale in five years, that doesn’t mean some sort of loop is formed. That’s a separate event.
Wash trading aims to increase (apparent) market cap by creating trades through insincere activities.