It will hardly come as a surprise to many, but according to the latest cash flow analysis from Goldman Sachs, 2018 was a record year for S&P 500 cash spending: not only did aggregate spending on capex, R&D, cash acquisitions, dividends, and share repurchases rose by 25% to $2.8 trillion, "the fastest year/year growth in 30 years"...

... but more notably, for the first time since the financial crisis, companies spent more on dividends and buybacks than they generated in free cash flow to wit: "share repurchases surged by 54% to $833 billion and for the first time in the post-crisis period net buybacks and dividends during 2018 totaled more than 100% of free cash flow."