NEW YORK — Companies are gobbling up their own shares this year. Should you join in the buying spree? For stock investors, there is seemingly no better bullish sign. After all, the corporate executives behind the decision to buy presumably have a good idea whether their company will prosper. If they’re buying, the thinking goes, the shares must be going up. Except they often do not — and may not now.

“Companies have been pretty poor at timing purchases,” says Robert Leiphart of Birinyi Associates, a research firm that has studied buybacks. Gregory Milano, the CEO of consultancy Fortuna Advisors, is more blunt: “We’re in the middle of a buyback bubble.”

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