Dividends

A dividend arrives in your broker file as one line: a date, a ticker and an amount. MyTraderDash works out which of your positions earned it, adds it to their results and uses your dividend history and market data to estimate what comes next.

The words used here

• Payment date: the day the cash lands in your account. This is the date on the broker's dividend line.
• Ex-dividend date (ex-date): the cut-off the company sets for each dividend. Shares you hold going into that day get the dividend, even if you sell on the ex-date itself; shares you buy on the ex-date don't. When your broker's dividend line says how many shares it paid on, that count decides, so a journal that landed on the ex-date still gets its dividend. It is usually a few weeks before the payment date.
• Position: one group of shares in the Trade Log. See Trades and positions.

The amount

The amount is the total on your broker's dividend line, for example $45.00 for 150 shares at $0.30. When the broker reports the tax withheld on a separate line, that line is skipped on import, so it does not reduce the dividend shown here.

Finding the ex-dividend date

Broker files rarely include the ex-date, so the app looks it up in the dividend history it gets from market data: the most recent ex-date for that stock in the 60 days before the payment date.

• Found: the ex-date is saved on the dividend and used from then on.
• Not found yet: the app uses the payment date in its place. The dividend is listed under Show Issues on the Trade Log. Dividend history is checked about once a day; when the ex-date turns up, the dividend is matched again on its own.

Which account gets it

Always the account it was paid into. A dividend paid into your TFSA stays in your TFSA, even if you hold the same stock in a taxable account. The app never moves dividend income between accounts.

Which listing gets it

Some tickers exist more than once: a stock can trade in Canada and in the US (DLR in CAD and DLR.U in USD), and two different companies can share a ticker on different exchanges. The dividend line often doesn't say which one it is. Within the account it was paid into, the app picks:

1. The listing you held on the ex-date. If you held only one, that's it.
2. If you held several, the one in the dividend's currency (a USD dividend goes to DLR.U).
3. If you held none on the ex-date, the listing whose position in that account closed most recently before the payment.
4. If you never held any of them in that account, the dividend is left where it is and shows up as unallocated (see below).

A dividend you added by hand, or whose amount you changed, is never moved.

Which positions get it

The dividend is shared between the positions that held shares on the ex-date, in proportion to their shares. The app counts shares bought up to and including the ex-date, minus shares sold before it.

Example. In one account you hold two positions in the same stock on the ex-date:

Each position's RETURN $ goes up by its share. A closed position can switch from LOSS to WIN because of its dividends: a stock sold $15 below cost that collected $20 in dividends ends at +$5.

When no position held shares on the ex-date (for example a dividend paid after you sold), the whole dividend goes to the position in that account and listing that last held the shares: an open position if there is one, otherwise the one that closed most recently.

When you move a dividend yourself

Select a dividend in the Trade Log and use Move to Group to put it on another position. The app keeps your choice exactly as you saved it and stops splitting that dividend by shares. If a position you chose disappears later (after a re-import or regrouping, for example), the dividend goes back to the automatic split.

Unallocated dividends

A dividend is unallocated when no position could take it, usually because the shares were bought before the history you imported, or in another account. It is listed in Data Quality on Accounts & Data as Orphan Dividend.

An unallocated dividend is still income:

• It counts in Received Dividends on the Dividends page.
• It counts in the Trade Log's Div figure when no position filter is set, and in your tax report.
• It is not part of any position's RETURN $, because no position holds it.

Importing older history for the account usually fixes it: once the buy is there, the dividend finds its position. See Data issues.

Received dividends

Received Dividends adds up your dividend lines by payment date, in your display currency (see Currencies). On the Overview tab it covers this year so far; on the History tab it covers all years. Every account is included, unallocated dividends too.

Projections

The Dividend Projections table estimates the income from what you hold today. It includes a stock only if you have shares now and market data says it pays dividends. For each stock:

• Est. Amount = the stock's latest dividend per share × the shares you hold now. The latest dividend comes from market data, not from your own records.

• Annual Est. = Est. Amount × payments per year, from the stock's Frequency:

  Frequency	Payments per year
  Monthly	12
  Quarterly	4
  Semi-Annual	2
  Annual	1

  The Frequency is read from the stock's last six ex-dividend dates: their gaps must agree (one late payment is allowed), so a stock that switched from quarterly to monthly reads as monthly. When the gaps don't agree, the frequency is Variable.

  No estimate is shown, and the stock adds nothing to the total, rather than a number that would be wrong, when:

  Badge	Why
  Variable	The payments are irregular, so there is no schedule to multiply by.
  No recent dividend	Nothing was paid for over two payment periods: the dividend may have stopped or been paused.
  Last one special?	The latest dividend is more than twice the ones before it, most likely a one-time special.
  Unknown	The app doesn't know yet how often the stock pays.

• Next Est. Payment = the next expected ex-date (the latest known ex-date plus one payment interval — about 30 days for monthly, 91 for quarterly — moved forward until it's in the future) plus the stock's usual gap between ex-date and payment when the app knows it. It's a rough guide based on the usual rhythm, not an announced date.

Example. You hold 200 shares of a quarterly payer whose last dividend was $0.25: Est. Amount $50, Annual Est. $200.

Each row is in the stock's own currency. Total Annual Projected Income adds the rows up in your display currency, at today's exchange rate. Est. Yearly is that total; Est. Monthly is the total ÷ 12.

Estimates assume you keep your current shares and the company keeps paying its latest dividend. Cuts, raises, special dividends and trades you make later are not foreseen.

Yield figures

Example. You paid $40 a share; the stock now trades at $50 and pays $2 a year. Yield is $2 ÷ $50 = 4%. YoC is $2 ÷ $40 = 5%. YoC rises as the price you paid falls behind today's price; Yield moves with the market.

Related

• Dividends page: the cards, charts and tabs.
• Performance and P&L: how dividends count in your results.
• Prices and market data: where dividend history and frequencies come from.
• Data issues: fixing unallocated dividends and missing ex-dates.