What it measures
The Capital Return Index is the historical z-score of three lenses on whether public companies are leaning into capital return: average buyback mentions per call (the cleanest single indicator of shareholder-return posture), net revenue guidance direction (firms raising guidance can afford to return capital), and average leader confidence (firms that hedge are not buying back stock). High readings mean buybacks are the dominant capital allocation story. Low readings mean capital is being held back for opex, inventory, or balance-sheet repair.
Why these three
Buyback announcements are the surface — what management commits to publicly. Revenue guidance direction is the ability — firms that are raising the top line have the cash flow to deploy. Confidence is the willingness — firms that hedge every forward statement do not authorize large repurchase programs. The composite separates real capital-return regimes from the rhetorical kind.
How stewards use this
Read against the Mania Index and the Boardroom Index. When Capital Return is high AND Mania is high, companies are buying back stock at peak multiples — historically a late-cycle signal. When Capital Return is high AND Mania is low, that is buybacks done well — concentrating ownership at depressed prices. The combination matters more than the absolute level.
What it does not say
The index does not measure dividend payouts (we do not have aggregate dividend signal yet). Buybacks are the marginal capital-return decision in modern US markets, so the gap is small but real.
History note
History recomputed 2026-09-21 on the rebuilt five-year Discourse corpus under the canonical discourse.* definition: readings before 2026-09-19 are weekly as-of recomputes that replace the history originally computed on the pre-rebuild corpus.
Revision — 26 September 2026
From 22 to 25 September 2026 the Discourse readings this index uses included about 159 companies outside the S&P 500, which had been added to Palanor's company list for other purposes. The S&P 500 Discourse readings now include S&P 500 companies only, and every reading from 22 September was recomputed. The 25 September reading moved from 68.0 to 79.8. Readings before 22 September were not affected.