One month ago, Political Calculations' monthly snapshot of the future for the S&P 500's quarterly dividend payouts dimmed for the first time in months.

This time around, we have better news. The outlook for the remaining quarters of dividends for the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) improved over the past month.

You can see how that outlook changed from one month ago in the following animated chart, which shows what the index' dividend outlook looked like on our 24 June 2024 snapshot and our new snapshot from 19 July 2024. It shows 2024-Q3's expected cash dividends increased from $18.18 to $18.29 per share, while the projected dividend payout for the final quarter of 2024 rose from $18.75 per share to $18.90 per share.

If you're accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to access a working version of the animated chart.

For 2024-Q3, the increase in forecast dividends falls just a penny per share below the level they had reached in our 14 May 2024 snapshot. The 19 July 2024 projection of the S&P 500's dividend payout for 2024-Q4 however is higher than had been forecast in that earlier snapshot.
 

More About Dividend Futures Data

For this series, we have been taking a snapshot of the CME Group's S&P 500 quarterly dividend futures data shortly after the second or third week of each month.

Dividend futures indicate the amount of dividends per share to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter's dividend futures contracts, which start on the day after the preceding quarter's dividend futures contracts expire and end on the third Friday of the month ending the indicated quarter. So for example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now "current" quarter of 2024-Q3 began on Saturday, 22 June 2024 and will end on Friday, 20 September 2024.

That makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures reported by Standard and Poor. S&P reports the amount of dividends per share paid out during regular calendar quarters after the end of each quarter. This term mismatch accounts for the differences in dividends reported by both sources, with the biggest differences between the two typically seen in the first and fourth quarters of each year.

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