I hope I got this correct as it was just a line moving  across the bottom of my screen

It lookedd to me as if ORCL and microsoft were both doing major {at least to my thinking] stock buy back

Now we know buy back usually increases the share value and often results in bonus money for the select group within the Co. that are paid salary plus stk value, options etc. That is one reason why so many Co. do share buy back although there may be other reasons I am not aware of.

My question:

Why does microsoft for instance, not take that buy back money and invest in more production facilities, jobs etc.

Could  microsoft not find markets some place in the world??? or is the market and the price of their product got the available market saturated, to the point expansion does not give a ROI

Next question

Why not pay the share holders that buy back money instead of the Co. using that money and buying their own shares. True the stk will most likely be worth more but do you want paper profits or money in the form of cash/ dividends. For those who want paper profits it is possible to roll the dividend back into the purchase of more stk. This gives the share holder the choice of either cash or paper profits.  With buy backs the share holder has little to no input on the decision.

We do both with part  of our various portfolio components as a cash dividend and some rolled back into purchase of more stk.