Here’s how it works. The company selects a “record date” and anyone who is the registered owner of stock on that date gets the dividend. Once the record date is set, the ex-dividend date is also set to fall two days before record date. This is done because it takes three business days to settle stock transfer. So you have to buy shares of stock before ex-dividend date so that you will be the stockholder of record three days later, on the record date. The same is true of exercising call options. They must be exercised before the ex-dividend date to take delivery of the shares by the record date.
You can sell your shares on ex-dividend date or any date after. As long as you bought shares before ex-dividend date, you get the dividend.
Payout date comes later, often as much as a month later. For irregular payments (semiannual or annual) payout date might be a matter of months.
The stock is expected to be reduced by the amount of the dividend on the record date. But in fact, this often becomes invisible. For example, a 30 cent dividend might be offset by normal market activity including a possible offsetting rise in price. So many mentions of this offsetting decline in the stock price make it sound like a disaster, when in fact the amount of the dividend is so small that the offset in the stock price is likely to have little lasting effect.
So there isn’t really that much to remember. You have to buy (or exercise your call option) before ex-date in order to earn the dividend. And you can sell any time after and still be acknowledged as stockholder of record.
SUMMARY
- An investor only needs to own the stock for one day (the record date) to be entitled to receive the dividend payment. If the investor buys before the ex-dividend date, and sells on the ex-dividend date or after, the investor will receive the dividend payment. These rules are different for special dividends over 25%.
