FTSE 100 historical dividend yields

[Stevoswing]

I wonder if someone may be able to help me.

I am going through a process of testing on the FTSE 100 a number of the best market timing models reported in Nelson Freeburg’s excellent Formula Research newsletter and comparing them with buy-and-hold.

I have 2 questions:

1) Does anyone know where I may be able to download (preferably for free!) weekly dividend yields for the FTSE 100 since its inception? I have trawled around numerous websites such as FTSE, LSE, BoE, Yahoo and IC but can’t seem to find them.

2) If you are not aware of freely available dividend yield data, do you have a suggestion for how I could approximate them from other data that is more readily available? e.g. use a % of the BoE interest rate (I have that data from the BoE website).

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Steve

 

[Stevoswing]

Simple dividend yield approximation

For those of you who may be interested, I paid for FTSE 100 total return data from Global Financial Data (data start 1994). I then compared that data with an estimate of the FTSE 100 total return, derived by approximating the historical dividend yield. I took today's ratio of dividend yield to interest rate (which on 16-Nov-07 when I did the analysis was 0.562, i.e. 3.23% dividend yield / 5.75% interest rate) and applying that constant ratio to the historical interest rate (downloading from BoE).

The difference between the two equity curves, each starting with £10,000, is immaterial - see the chart.

It almost seems too good?

Steve