Apple announces biggest stock buyback in history. What is a stock buyback?

After better than expected quarterly results, Apple Inc. has announced a share buyback which is unprecedented in history: a whopping 110 billion dollars. Shares of the US tech giant soared over six per cent on Friday, after the announcement.

The value of the company went up by almost 200 billion dollars, making it worth about 2.86 trillion dollars.

This is the second highest value for a company, after Microsoft, which is worth 3 trillion dollars. If Apple buys back all the shares it said it would, it will own nearly 4 per cent of its own company.