If you want to receive a dividend, you'll need to get in early.
To understand what it means when a share is ‘ex-dividend’, we actually need to recap dividends, first.
So, a dividend is like a little monetary pat on the back from a public company to its investors, to say ‘thank you for investing in us’ and ‘we appreciate you’ and also, just to keep them happy. Often, investors buy shares in dividend-paying companies if they are looking for an ongoing.
We know that the company’s board of directors decides how much the dividend will be, and sets a series of dates - including the ex-dividend date.
The ex-dividend date is the cutoff date which determines the shareholders that will receive the dividend payment.
It’s simple. If you own shares of the company the day before the ex-dividend date, you receive the next dividend payment. If you purchase shares of the company after the ex-dividend date, you won’t receive that dividend payout.
That means you purchased it on or after the ex-dividend date, and it means you won’t receive a dividend payment. Instead, the payment will go to the person who sold you the stock (because they owned the stock at the ex-dividend date)
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