Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
I've never quite figured out how that works. It seems logical that you could take $XX and invest it in twelve different stocks that each pay out a dividend on a different month, and pretty much have a guaranteed high return. But that's so obvious that I have to think that the market corrects for it.
It seems that the common theory is that a stock price naturally fluctuates to take into account the fact that a dividend is about to be paid, and it does so in a way that corrects for the differences. That seems kind of suspicious to me, because it still seems like you could take advantage of that since it's a known future change in the stock price. But I've never studied it to see if there's a predictable change. Maybe I should, but it seems that if there was something that simple and predictable, Wall Street would be all over it.
Short answer: I don't know, and it's a good question. It seems like there should be a way to game the system, but I suspect there's some rule that keeps us from doing it.
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From what I recall, the stock price will drop by the amount of the quarterly dividend payout amount the last day you are eliguble to get a dividend. As far as I know, there is no set amount of time you have to own the stock, other than 2 business days prior to that date.
I bought Coke stock a day or 2 before this last dividend payment which was on 7/1 and still got the dividend payment on it.