To Buy Dividends or Not to Buy Dividends? (2024)

FAQs

To Buy Dividends or Not to Buy Dividends? ›

The relationship between dividends and market value

As long as a company continues to thrive and your portfolio is well-balanced, reinvesting dividends will benefit you more than taking the cash will. But when a company is struggling or when your portfolio becomes unbalanced, taking the cash and investing the money elsewhere may make more sense.

Despite their storied histories, they cut their dividends. 9 In other words, dividends are not guaranteed and are subject to macroeconomic and company-specific risks. Another downside to dividend-paying stocks is that companies that pay dividends are not usually high-growth leaders.

You must buy a stock before the ex-dividend date to receive the recently declared dividend. If you buy the stock on the ex-date, you will not be entitled to the dividend because on that date, the stock begins trading ex-dividend, or "without dividend."

Thus, investors who buy stocks that do not pay dividends prefer to see these companies reinvest their earnings to fund other projects. They hope these internal investments will yield higher returns via a rising stock price. Smaller companies are more likely to pursue these strategies.

To do this, simply hold the dividend-paying securities in a tax-deferred retirement account such as a 401(k) or IRA. Contributions to these accounts may be tax-deductible, so your dividend reinvestments escape taxation at the time you make them. After that, your money grows tax-free over time.

Not reinvesting dividends (and using them to invest in something else instead) can help improve a portfolio's diversification over time. Even if you don't have an overly large position in a stock, you may not want to purchase more of it if it's already trading at a significant premium.

The relationship between dividends and market value

Dividend-paying stocks, on average, tend to be less volatile than non-dividend-paying stocks. A dividend stream, especially when reinvested to take advantage of the power of compounding, can help build wealth over time. However, dividends do have a cost.

The ex-dividend date is the first day the stock trades without its dividend, thus ex-dividend. If you want to get the dividend payment, you need to own the stock by this day. That means you have to buy before the end of the day before the ex-dividend date to get the next dividend.

Which stocks pay the highest monthly dividends? ›

After a stock goes ex-dividend, the share price typically drops by the amount of the dividend paid to reflect the fact that new shareholders are not entitled to that payment. Dividends paid out as stock instead of cash can dilute earnings, which can also have a negative impact on share prices in the short term.

“One mistake to avoid,” Cabacungan says, “is to buy a company's stock simply because it issues a high dividend.” If the company has leveraged excessive debt to fund the dividend, it could come at the expense of future profitability and hurt growth prospects.

Dividends generate taxable income

Depending on the underlying stock and how long you've held it, you might be taxed federally at long-term capital gains rates (anywhere from 0% to 20%) or at ordinary income rates (between 10% and 37%). You also have no control as to when a dividend is paid, or if it's paid at all.

If customers choose to reinvest the money, they get cash dividends from the corporation. They will still be responsible for paying taxes on all those amounts. But if the business reinvests its dividends to buy more shares, it won't have to pay taxes until they sell them.

Growth funds tend to have an advantage if your timetable is longer than dividend-focused mutual funds. This means they are more likely, but not always or even nearly so, to outpace what your dividend reinvestments would.

When you are 5-10 years from retirement, stop automatic dividend reinvestment. This is when you transition from an accumulation asset allocation to a de-risked asset allocation. In Summary: When in accumulation, reinvest dividends. When in transition or drawdown, don't!

A dividend reinvestment plan, or DRIP, automatically uses the proceeds generated from dividend stocks to purchase more shares of the company. This strategy allows investors to compound their returns over time by accumulating more shares, which themselves pay dividends that will be reinvested.