Traveler's Shares Outstanding

TRV is up 2% today after reporting another strong quarter.  Even though insurance stocks have done relatively well over the last year, Property Casualty insurance is a line of business that is often misunderstood and unloved by Wall Street.  It's a highly competitive business with few barriers to entry, but in some ways that makes the industry even more interesting to study.  If there's one thing that P/C companies understand it's that the name of their game is to grow book value per share.  To that end, they are not bashful about buying back stock when they don't have a more efficient use for capital.  As evidence, below is a chart of TRV's share count since 2005.  Over that time period, the company has bought back almost half of its shares.