Dividends

Can anyone shed light onto this, using lloyds as an example.

On the 20th this stock goes ex dividend.

My question is;

If i purchase x amount of shares on the 18th and sell them on the 24th of this month am i still entitled to the dividend payout on the 29th of may.

or

do i need to keep them for the duration from now till may.

thanks in advance

phil

if you buy anytime before ex dividend you will receive the payment. The payment (using lloyds) is due may, that doesn't mean you have to have held them that long
Is that really what you want to do though? the price often drops to reflect the dividend pament..not always of course

Thanks magaluti,

Its currently peaking 68p and dropping slowly,

Hypothetically speaking if the divi was 4% ish then the share price will sit around 65p just before the 20th.

I'm going to leave it in and see how it pans out, hopefully after the ex div date the share price rises and win win.

if nothing else a learning curve i'm on !!

theres nothing clever about this really...

"on the ex-div date, the exchange automatically reduces the price of the stock by the amount of the dividend"

so at the end of the day you are holding on to the stock because you are betting on a capital gain whether you buy with or ex-dividend

Hi Kaeso,

To whom is the dividend of benefit to, if the stock balances out at the same price ?

the stockholder gets the payment but still holds the same number of shares, he/she will be entitled to the next dividend as well, and so on. think of the dividend as being "priced in"