One of the biggest pitfalls of buybacks is the piss-poor timing of them. You're doing good, flush with cash, and share prices are probably at a peak as a result. Shareholders would probably want to rake you over coals if you sat on cash and did nothing in order to weather a storm and perhaps do a buyback when the share prices are relatively undervalued, but you have fiduciary responsibility, so what do you do? Buy at the top and then get caught with your pants down when the shit hits the fan. Doing dumb shit to make shortsighted shareholders happy basically