===Williams Cos (WMB) increases quarterly cash dividend 6.1% to $0.475/share from $0.4475/share

Earnings Date	Feb 14, 2024
Forward Dividend & Yield	1.79 (5.14%)
Ex-Dividend Date	Dec 07, 2023

 

Highest Yielding S&P 500 Stocks

Irving, Texas-based Pioneer Natural is yielding an impressive 12.2% despite the stock falling just 2.6% this year. Just know that the dividend likely won't stick around forever. Rival Exxon Mobil (XOM) is looking to buy Pioneer for roughly $65 billion. Exxon Mobil stock yields just 3.8% — a fraction of what Pioneer does.

Pioneer is the only S&P 500 stock paying a double-digit percentage as a dividend. But approaching that level at a 9.4% yield is ailing drugstore Walgreens Boots Alliance. Mostly due to a 43% plunge in the stock price, the company now yields 9.4%. That's certainly an outlier. S&P 500 industry peer CVS Health (CVS), in contrast, yields just 3.4%.

Company	Ticker	Dividend yield	Sector
Pioneer Natural Resources	PXD	12.21%	Energy
Walgreens Boots Alliance	WBA	9.36	Consumer Staples
Altria Group	MO	9.21	Consumer Staples
Invesco	IVZ	8.27	Financials
Verizon	VZ	6.92	Communication Services
Devon Energy	DVN	6.5555	Energy
Healthpeak Properties	PEAK	6.54	Real Estate
Whirlpool	WHR	6.476	Consumer Discretionary
Kinder Morgan	KMI	6.4571	Energy
AT&T	T	6.45	Communication Services
KeyCorp	KEY	6.34	Financials
Boston Properties	BXP	6.32	Real Estate
Truist Financial	TFC	6.27	Financials

Sources: S&P Global Market Intelligence, IBD

=== Ready Capital (RC) decreases quarterly cash dividend

Previously

• Forward Dividend & Yield 1.16 (10.11%)
• Ex-Dividend Date Sep 28, 2023

Ready Capital decreases quarterly cash dividend to $0.30/share from $0.36/share

==New York Mortgage Trust (NYMT) decreases quarterly cash dividend

Previously:

• Forward Dividend & Yield 1.20 (12.53%)
• Ex-Dividend Date Sep 20, 2023   

New York Mortgage Trust decreases quarterly cash dividend to $0.20/share from $0.30/share

Basic Rules You Need to Earn that Dividend

There is only one day when you have to be recognized as the owner: the record date.

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%.

Top-Tier Dividend Stocks With 5%+ Yields

These  high-yielding dividend stocks can be a great source of passive income for investors.

• Devon Energy (DVN): Investors looking for energy exposure can’t go wrong owning this big dividend payer.
• Verizon Communications (VZ): Patient investors might find this all-time low trading price a compelling opportunity.
• V.F. Corp. (VFC): This company’s recent decline makes its yield too good to ignore.

NAREIT's REITweek virtual conference : June 2-4, 2020

Speakers include 

• Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR) CEO A. William Stein, 
• Crown Castle International (NYSE:CCI) CEO Jay Brown, 
• Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (NYSE:PEB) CEO Jon Bortz, 
• Duke Realty Corporation (NYSE:DRE) CEO James Connor, 
• Regency Centers (NASDAQ:REG) CEO Lisa Palmer, 
• Public Storage (NYSE:PSA) CEO Joseph Russell, 
• Boston Properties (NYSE:BXP) CEO Owen Thomas and 
• Ventas (NYSE:VTR) CEO Debra Cafaro. 

Companies with management presentations include

• QTS Realty (NYSE:QTS), 
• Global Medical REIT (NYSE:GMRE), 
• Invitation Homes (NYSE:INVH), 
• Bluerock Residential Growth REIT (NYSEMKT:BRG), 
• CTO Realty Growth (NYSEMKT:CTO), 
• CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE), Regency Centers, 
• American Tower (NYSE:AMT), 
• Colony Capital (NYSE:CLNY), 
• CatchMark (NYSE:CTT), 
• Sabra Health Care REIT (NASDAQ:SBRA) and 
• NexPoint Residential Trust (NYSE:NXRT).