Category: Blog

A common stock’s ex-dividend price behavior is a continuing source of confusion to investors. Read on to learn about what happens to the market value of a share of stock when it goes “ex” (as in ex-dividend) and why. We’ll also provide some ideas that may help you hang on to more of your hard-earned dollars. KEY TAKEAWAYS When buying and selling…

Ex-Dividend Date vs. Date of Record: An Overview Are you mystified by the workings of dividends and dividend distributions? Chances are it’s not the concept of dividends that confuses you. The ex-dividend date and date of record are the tricky factors. Briefly, in order to be eligible for payment of stock dividends, you must buy the stock (or already…

Dividends per share (DPS) measures the total amount of profits a company pays out to its shareholders, generally over a year, on a per-share basis. DPS can be calculated by subtracting the special dividends from the sum of all dividends over one year, and dividing this figure by the outstanding shares. For example, company HIJ has five million…

Dividends can affect the price of their underlying stock in a variety of ways. While the dividend history of a given stock plays a general role in its popularity, the declaration and payment of dividends also has a specific and predictable effect on market prices. How Dividends Work For investors, dividends serve as a popular source of…

Generally speaking, the stock market is driven by supply and demand, much like any market. When a stock is sold, a buyer and seller exchange money for share ownership. The price for which the stock is purchased becomes the new market price. When a second share is sold, this price becomes the newest market price, etc….

The Gordon Growth Model, or the dividend discount model (DDM), is a model used to calculate the intrinsic value of a stock based on the present value of future dividends that grow at a constant rate. The model assumes a company exists forever and pays dividends that increase at a constant rate. To estimate the value of a…

It’s time to dust off one of the oldest, most conservative methods of valuing stocks: the dividend discount model (DDM). It’s one of the basic applications of a financial theory that students in any introductory finance class must learn. Unfortunately, the theory is the easy part. The model requires loads of assumptions about companies’ dividend payments and growth patterns,…

Investors can use the dividend discount model (DDM) for stocks that have just been issued or that have traded on the secondary market for years. There are two circumstances when DDM is practically inapplicable: when the stock does not issue dividends, and when the stock has a very high growth rate. The DDM is very similar to the…

The Gordon Growth Model values a company’s stock using an assumption of constant growth in payments a company makes to its common equity shareholders. The three key inputs in the model are dividends per share, the growth rate in dividends per share, and the required rate of return. Dividends (D) per share represent the annual payments a…

While the GGM method of DDM is widely used, it has two well-known shortcomings. The model assumes a constant dividend growth rate in perpetuity. This assumption is generally safe for very mature companies that have an established history of regular dividend payments. However, DDM may not be the best model to value newer companies that…