Dividend information

[rftanner]

I have a lot of dividend paying stocks and keep track of ex dates, payable dates and dividend yields in the Description field after looking up the info manually stock by stock. Since ex dates change, I sometimes miss an upcoming date which can affect covered call options being exercised for the dividend and deciding whether to trade a stock or not.

It would be really helpful if there were fields for ex date, pay date, dividend amount and annual dividend yield. Displaying these fields on reports would save me a lot of time (I mean several hours a month) and clean up my reports.

[Mark]

Hi rftanner,

Thanks for the feedback. You may consider using the "Income" tab in the "Investment Properties..." dialog, and setting the income style to "Dividends". You can then record dates, and use the "Income Schedule" report to see your upcoming dividend dates. There aren't separate ex dates and payment dates, but you could at least choose one of these to track. I understand this doesn't fully satisfy your request, but hopefully it will at least help.

[rftanner]

Using the Income style for dividend info is actually more work than using the Description field and it displays on the portfolio report. Unfortunately dividend payment dates are not always consistent and ex dates can vary by a week or more. My issue is getting dividend data when it is announced.

Is there a field which shows that there is new news for a security that can be displayed on the portfolio report as dividend info is normally part of a news release?

[Mark]

Hi rftanner,

Sorry, no, we don't currently have such a field. I can see that being a useful option, if we could find a good source to determine if there is news or not. Currently, there is a "Web news URL" where you can have FM open a web browser to a certain URL that has the symbol in it. It can make it easier to go look at the news, but we don't have a field that alerts you to actually go look. See "Options / General Preferences... / Menus / Web News URL...".

[rftanner]

Hi Mark,
It has been a while since we had a dialog about providing a place for dividend dates and rates and automatically picking them up from your pricing source. I know this is possible since I get this info on stocks I hold with OptionsXpress but most of my dividend paying stocks are not held there. Having fields to capture the ex date and payable date along with the rate would allow you to provide the dividend info on ex date and ask if I wanted the system to automatically post the dividend on payable date. It could also be used to adjust the income field for the current amount of annual income.
Bob Tanner

[Mark]

Hi Bob,

Okay, thanks for the feedback. I do agree it would be nice to add support for tracking this information.