Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

How are stock buybacks not considered insider trading?
Companies already have to protect themselves against employees trading the company's shares with insider information. They typically do that in a number of ways: Taken together, this tends to mostly mitigate the risk of employees trading with insider information, though it's probably not perfect. In practice, the company itself's knowledge of insider information is the same as that of its senior management. So it makes sense for a company to be allowed to trade under the same conditions as its senior management. From https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2013/03/14/questions-surrounding-share-repurchases/ : If the company is repurchasing outside of a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan,   it should limit its purchases to open window periods when officers and   directors are able to buy and sell securities of the company. In   addition, the company also can choose to disclose any material   non-public information prior to any share repurchase if it is in   possession of material non-public information at a time when it is   seeking to make a share repurchase outside of a Rule 10b5-1 trading   plan. As mentioned in the quote, a company can also set up a trading plan in advance (at a time when it doesn't have inside information) to be executed unconditionally in the future. Then even if the company comes into possession of inside information, it won't be using this knowledge to direct trades.