Soo companies like Costco, Walmart etc are issuing 1 time special dividends this quarter before January 1st at like 7%...

discussion 1: is this just a way for management with holdings to make $ while the tax rate is at 15% and not 40% in-case we go over the fiscal cliff? a way to give back to shareholders and allow them to take in CFs while its still at 15%? Easy to do since its debt financed and treasury rates are so low that they can issue low interest rate on debt? whats the real rationale you guys think? shouldnt this help the future valuation of the stock? ex- current price is just PV of all implied predicted future CFs of the stock (both share price and dividend related increase)...this includes dividends ?

Assume a customer holds 1 ABC Oct 60 Put contract. The market price of ABC is currently $60. On an ex-date with a dividend of $4, the new market price is $56. The contract is still a ABC Oct 60 put correct? The strike and multiplier do not change? So what happens to the premium? Does it just jump up around $4 (there's still time value so it's probably around $4, not exactly)? Why is this? What's the logic?

Sorry I'm studying for my series 56 and my book doesn't have a clearer explanation.

I know for stock dividends, the contract stays the same. But why does it stay the same for cash dividends?

I own a bunch of dividend stocks and was wondering if it's worth it to reinvest the dividends? For those of you who invest in dividend stocks, do you reinvest your dividends and why/why not? Also what happens if you have fractions of stocks that have been purchased automatically with the dividends- how do you sell 103.47 shares of something? Thanks.

We have been urging investors to focus on high dividend stocks for the past year. The problem is, most people don’t know how to time the market. Dividend-yielding stocks are valued like any other stocks, and, like other investments, when they are undervalued is the best time to buy. We used price-to-book and price-to-earnings ratios to pick the most undervalued stocks.

Research in Motion has had round after round of bad news, and the stock now trades at $18.85, which is hovering around book value. They need to do something to right the ship quickly. 40.3M shares are sold short, or Short Interest as % of Float 8.57%. That's from Scottrade fundamental charts, so the accuracy might not be spot on, but, essentially, a large portion of the shares are sold short.

With so many shares sold short, why don't they use some of that cash they have + take on some debt and pay a special one time dividend. They could use a good portion of the money they borrow to go towards speeding up their product pipeline, while using the rest + extra cash on hand to pay a large dividend?

Here is a current sheet of the 10 best Dogs of the Dow. Such stocks have the lowest expected price to earnings ratio and highest dividend yield within the Dow Jones Index. In average, the 10 cheapest stocks of the Dow have a dividend yield of 4.25 percent and a forward price to earnings ratio of 10.84. The average price to book ratio amounts to 2.14 and price to sales ratio is 1.70. 40 percent of the stocks have a dividend yield of more than 4 percent.

Here is the table with some fundamentals:

http://bit.ly/q2WZnT

Which one would you buy?

Here is a current sheet of large capitalized stocks (market capitalization of more than USD 10 billion) with a dividend yield of more than 5 percent and high margins. The operating margin of the observed companies is at least 25 percent. 15 stocks fulfilled these criteria of which 7 have a dividend yield of more than 7 percent.

Here is the table with some fundamentals:

http://bit.ly/p6T2oY

Which one would you buy?

Here is a current sheet of growth stocks with a market capitalization of more than $200 million and a dividend yield of more than 5 percent as well as a forward price to earnings ratio of less than 10. All stocks grew by 25 percent or more over the past 5 years in sales. 13 high yield growth stocks remained the screening results of which 5 have a double digit dividend yield. 77 percent of the stocks come from the financial sector.

Here is the table with some fundamentals:
http://bit.ly/pzjH8S

The average price to earnings ratio (P/E ratio) amounts to 13.0 while the average forward P/E ratio is 7.5. The dividend yield has an average value of 9.3 percent. Price to book ratio is 1.0 and price to sales ratio 3.3. The operating margin amounts to 34.3 percent.

Which one would you buy?

Why do some firms with high capital expenditure and loaded with a lot of debt (like tech & telecom firms) still issue dividend to shareholders? What's the point?

Hi gurus,

Is it common for a bank to put each year's dividend to shareholders to dividend liability on the balance sheet, accumulating dividend liability and not paying it to the shareholders until later? Why

For those of you who have your own PA, what are some high dividend paying stocks you would recommend?

Bigbadanalyst

Trying to help my parents invest some of their money and thought some large cap dividend paying stocks would be a good play for them. Anyone know where I can find up to date info on dividend payouts? Seems like Yahoo Finance is a little out of date. Thanks chimps and chimpettes.

I figure all you trading pros can shed some light on this..

Do you get the benefits of a stock dividend when you only own a call option for x number of shares? Do you then control x+ dividend number of shares upon maturity of the option?

Background:

Motorola will split into 2 companies on January 4th and I'm considering buying some call options maturing after the split.

So the transaction will go down like this: prior to January 4th current stockholders will receive a stock dividend of Motorola Mobility shares (that the company splitting off) and then the old company will do a reverse stock split.

The question is once my options mature will that include control over Motorola Mobility shares that were distributed through a stock dividend?

I've often seen in sell side research that they mention that their recommendation methodology is based on a total expected return over the next twelve months, which includes capital gains + dividend yields.

For example lets say a stock that is trading at $4. The analyst values the company and arrives at a target price of $5. The analyst also estimates that the company will be give $0.5 in dividend next year.

Current Price: $4
Price Target: $5
Expected share price return (%): 25%
Expected dividend yield (%): 12.5%
Total Expected Return (%): 37.5%

Please attach link with your answer

Generally speaking just wondering if this refers to the S&P500 or Dow?

Also:

Where could I find the amount of world equity value the U.S. market has?
as well as the U.S. share of world population?

And if I am calculating the dividend yield on the U.S. market today, what I just take the average dividend payout calculated by taking the latest declared dividend (annualized) and divided by the stock price.