Dividends Continue to Rise

The dividend numbers are in for the first quarter and the S&P 500 paid out $7.954 per share (that’s an index-adjusted figure). This was a 12.2% increase over the first quarter of 2012 and it marks the ninth-straight quarter that dividends have grown by double digits.

Due to tax reasons, there was a surge of dividends in Q4. Dividends rose more than 22.7% over the fourth-quarter of 2011, but I’m glad to see that the dividend trend still continues. For the last four quarters, the S&P 500 has paid out $32.112. At 2%, that comes to 1,605.60.

Here’s a look at the S&P 500 (in blue, left scale) and its dividend (in black, right scale). The two lines are scaled at a ratio of 50-to-1 so whenever the lines cross, the market’s dividend yield is exactly 2%.

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What I find interesting is that this latest bull market seems much more solid than the previous two, especially the tech boom of the late 1990s. Dividends have been rising quite steadily. Except for the worst part of the financial crisis, the S&P 500 has mostly had a dividend yield of about 2% for the last 10 years.

Posted by on April 1st, 2013 at 11:25 am


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