What is dividend date and ex-dividend date?

Question

Keep seeing them at finance.yahoo.com. Thanks!

Answer 1

Divident date is when company actually pays divident.

Ex-divident date is the date when you don't qualify for divident anymore.

For example Barclays goes ex-divident on 1 april, it means that if you buy shares before 1 april you'll qualify for the divident if you buy on 1 april or after you don't, even though they might pay dividend itself on 1 may.

Hope I made it clear.

Answer 2

There are four dates for dividends.

The Declaration Date, the date the company declares the dividend and the related information

The Record Date, the date you must be a registered shareholder in order to get the dividend

The Payable Date, the date the dividend will be paid to the shareholders

The X-Date, The date that is usually three business days before the record date. This is date is to let all purchase/sells settle and the stockholder record can be produced. If you buy the stock on this date, or after, you do not get the dividend. You must own the stock before this date.

Here's a website that may help either with this questions or others that you may have http://www.dividenddetective.com/

Hope I was of some help.