Friday, 13 July 2012

What are ex-dividend shares?

Question
Hi, can you tell me what it means when it says on share information EX DIVIDEND?

Thank YouAnswer
Shares go 'ex-dividend' to stop investors from receiving up to a year's worth of dividend income by owning the shares for just a few days. For example, if they were to buy a share just before a dividend is paid and then sell it shortly afterwards.

When a company announces its dividend it also announces an ex-dividend date, dividends are only paid to whoever owned the shares before that date (typically a few months before the dividend is actually paid). As you'd expect, the price of the shares falls by around the amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend date as investors buying then won't receive the imminent dividend.

In practice this should make little difference when buying shares, although bear in mind when buying shares ex-dividend that you may have a long wait until you receive your first dividend (as the imminent dividend will be paid to the share's owner on the ex-dividend date).

Read this Q and A at http://www.candidmoney.com/questions/question698.aspx

No comments:

Post a Comment