What do you do when you have more cash than you know what to do with? Buy your own stock! And that’s exactly what 10 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500, including Apple (AAPL), Intel (INTC) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) are doing more than any others in Corporate America, says S&P Dow Jones Indices. Each of these companies spent more than $2 billion buying their own stock. Companies in the S&P 500 spent $132.6 billion buying back their own stock in the fourth quarter of 2014 – which is up 2.5% from the same period last year, says S&P Dow Jones Indices. For the year, companies spend 16.3% more buying back their stock to the tune of $553.3 billion. These buybacks are a bet that there’s no better way for the company to use cash – than buying back its own shares at the market value. S&P 500 COMPANIES THAT SPENT MOST ON BUYBACKS IN 2014CompanySymbolQ4 2014 buyback ($ mils.)AppleAAPL$5,030IntelINTC$3,686Exxon MobilXOM$3,318General MotorsGM$3,109Wells FargoWFC$2,945Johnson & JohnsonJNJ$2,743MicrosoftMSFT$2,145OracleORCL$2,087ComcastCMCSA$2,001Gilead SciencesGILD$2,001 Sources: S&P Dow Jones Indices If there’s one troubling aspect of these buybacks, it’s that companies have an infamously poor track record at timing them. Companies tend to buy at the high – just to watch the stock fall. The most ever spent in a year on buybacks was $589.1 billion in 2007 – right before the financial crisis. Sourсe: http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/