The outlook for the S&P 500's dividends generally improved since previous snapshot of their future. For the five quarters in our forecast window, four showed solid gains, while one had a small decline.
Here is our summary of how the outlook for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share has changed in the past month for the current quarter of 2026-Q1, the remaining three quarters of 2026, and the first quarter of 2027:
- 2026-Q1: Increase of $0.21, rising to $21.71 per share
- 2026-Q2: Decrease of $0.03, dipping to $19.70 per share
- 2026-Q3: Increase of $0.24, rising to $20.33 per share
- 2026-Q4: Increase of $0.40, rising to $20.42 per share
- 2027-Q1: Increase of $0.27, rising to $21.60 per share
The following chart shows how expectations for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share changed in the month from 15 January 2025 to 13 February 2026.
As a general rule, the further out the forecast, the more subject to change the dividends will be before they are finalized at the end of their indicated quarter. Be sure to read the following section providing more information about dividend futures data to get a better understanding of what this information represents.
More About Dividend Futures Data
For this series, we take 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. For example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now "current" quarter of 2026-Q1 began on Saturday, 20 December 2025 and will end on Friday, 20 March 2026, one month from today.
Because dividend futures are tied to options contracts that run on this schedule, that makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures that are 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.
How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in current day stock prices is described by this math.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A crystal ball with the word 'SP 500' written inside it". And 'Dividends' written above it, which we added.
Labels: dividends, forecasting, SP 500
Every three months, we take a snapshot of the expectations for future earnings in the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) at approximately the midpoint of the current quarter, shortly after most U.S. firms have announced their previous quarter's earnings.
Or we did, up until this month. The man behind the data we've visualized for this feature, Standard and Poor's Howard Silverblatt, retired on 31 January 2026 after 48 years, 8 months, 14 days at S&P!
Benedek Vörös, S&P Dow Jones' Index Investment Strategy Director, marked the career milestone just before Howard's final day on the job:
This week has given the markets plenty to digest. But for many of us at S&P Dow Jones Indices, the most significant data point isn't on the tape. It’s on the calendar. Tomorrow marks the final day of Howard Silverblatt’s legendary 49-year tenure at our firm. For five decades, Howard’s definitive voice tracked the ebb and flow of the world’s most prominent index with a precision that turned financial math into a narrative art form. Whether he was breaking down S&P 500®, buyback yields for the Wall Street Journal or explaining the compounding power of dividends on CNBC, Howard taught a generation of investors that while price is what you pay, the underlying cash flow is what you get.
We hope S&P continues regularly publishing the data series Howard routinely made freely available at the S&P 500's official home on the internet. Including the earnings expectations we're featuring in this article.
Although we pulled the data on 13 February 2026 and referenced that date in the following chart, our Winter 2026 snapshot was really taken on 31 January 2026 and has been pulled from Howard's final Earnings & Estimates spreadsheet, which he posted on his last day on the job! The following chart presents how earnings expectations have changed from the end of 2021 through the end of January 2026:
The earnings outlook has substantially improved since our Fall 2025 snapshot. Earnings for the final quarter of 2025 are still being reported, but the S&P 500's trailing year earnings per share rose from $244.51 to $246.47 per share. Looking further forward, the index' forecast trailing year earnings per share through the end of 2026 saw robust improvements, rising from $281.78 to $294.00 as the outlook for earnings improved.
It's quite an impressive earnings outlook to go out on. Howard Silverblatt picked his exit date well!
At this writing, we don't know S&P's plans regarding whether it will continue publishing this data series or others that Howard maintained, such as S&P's monthly Divstat data that continued a long tradition of publishing the U.S. stock market's dividend metadata that extends back to January 1929, when a young firm then known as Standard Statistics began the practice and made it available to the Associated Press! We hope they do, because that's a big part of what made the firm that became Standard & Poor a trusted source of information conveying how the stock market is performing over the years.
For the last 49 years of its history, Howard Silverblatt tracked and presented the market data that sustained that hard-earned trust. He's left behind some very big shoes to fill.
Reference
Silverblatt, Howard. Standard & Poor. S&P 500 Earnings and Estimates. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 31 January 2026. Accessed 13 February 2026. Over the years, this spreadsheet captured a lot of Howard's personality, occasionally featuring photos or other observations that made it stand apart from the dry presentation of financial data that's common in the finance industry.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A crystal ball with the word 'SP 500' written inside it". And 'Earnings' written above it, which we added.
Labels: earnings, forecasting, SP 500
Five years ago, the Mars Perseverance Rover landed on the surface of Mars. Unlike previous probes and rovers sent to the surface of the Red Planet, Perseverance had a unique potential. The rover was equipped with drilling tools to obtain rock samples from where it traveled within the Jezero Crater and stainless steel tubes in which to store them for transport back to Earth.
The following video depicts the rover's arrival to the surface of Mars on 18 February 2021:
It's the storage of the rock samples that makes the Perseverance rover's mission so unique, because it marks the first time true economic activity has taken place on Mars. The robot rover extracted raw materials, packaged them, then placed them into inventory for the purpose of facilitating their export to Earth. This aspect of the rover's interplanetary trade mission represents the birth of the Martian economy.
As of 18 February 2026, the Perseverance rover has collected 28 rock samples, all stored in their packaging for transportation back to Earth. While most of those samples are still onboard the rover, ten of the samples have been deposited to the 'Three Forks' Sample Depot, where a future mission to Mars would be sent to collect and transport them to Earth.
Except that's not going to happen anytime soon. The original planners behind the Mars Sample Return mission left a pretty big, undefined hole in how that would realistically happen. Their basic concept was essentially a version of South Park's Underwear Gnomes' business plan:
- Phase 1: Collect rock samples for return to Earth.
- Phase 2: ?
- Phase 3: Samples delivered to Earth. Profit!
NASA was very unhappy with the rough concept that had been originally developed for "Phase 2" and directed other engineers to develop more effective and less costly replacement plans to send new landers to Mars' surface, collect the rock samples from their depots where they are being held as inventory, and transport them to Earth.
Here is an animation featuring RocketLab's Mars sample return concept, which gives an idea of the complexity that's involved in a "Phase 2" for a sample return mission:
After more than a year of studies for the mission with little prospect of affordably achieving its goal, the U.S. Congress pulled the plug on the sample return mission as it had been defined on 6 January 2026 by declining to fund it. The appropriations bill funding NASA and cutting off the Mars Sample Return mission ultimately passed with a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Congress on 16 January 2026.
The Mars Perseverance Rover will continue to collect and store additional rock samples as its mission will continue, but exports from Mars will be on hold until the right combination of an achievable return mission at an affordable cost has been realized.
The following chart presents our latest estimates of Mars' GDP by Martian year and quarter:
Mars GDP has been in recession since the first quarter of Martian Year 38 (MY38-Q1), with no new rock samples collected or placed into inventory for export on Mars since March 2025. We anticipate that lack of economic activity will continue through the current Martian quarter (MY38-Q3), which will end on 24 April 2026.
Labels: ideas
Despite ongoing carnage affecting companies with exposure to AI technology development costs, the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) managed to eke out a small gain in the trading week ending on Friday, 13 February 2026. The index closed out the week at 6,836.17, down 96.13 points or 1.39% from the preceding week.
But the market wasn't down evenly among all stocks. Stocks for firms either making big investments in building out their AI-technology infrastructure saw big declines, joined by firms either financing them or at risk of having their businesses disrupted by the implementation of AI technologies.
Meanwhile, firms without that kind of exposure gained, as investors rotated their holdings into small cap and value stocks. If it weren't for that rotation, the index would have fallen further.
Together, these factors put the trajectory of the S&P 500 at the lower end of the range it would be expected to be for investors focusing on the upcoming future quarter of 2026-Q2. The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows the effect of investors moving away from the big cap tech stocks that have dominated the S&P 500 in the last few years.
The market moving headlines capture some of the rolling whackage, to coin a phrase, afflicting the stocks of companies with high AI exposure risks.
- Monday, 9 February 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- White House sets lower job growth expectations; Fed grapples with same issue
- Oil settles up more than 1% after US urges caution for vessels near Iran
- Fed minions not worrying about dollar, U.S. Treasury Secretary not worrying about Fed's balance sheet:
- Fed's Miran says weaker dollar not affecting monetary policy choices
- US Treasury's Bessent says Fed will take its time on balance sheet moves
- Bigger stimulus developing in China:
- China's stock exchanges introduce measures to facilitate refinancing for listed companies
- China's January bank lending seen up on predictable monetary policies: Reuters poll
- Growth signs developing in Japan:
- Japan markets set for renewed 'Takaichi trade' after landslide election win
- Yen strengthens against U.S. dollar after Japanese election
- ECB minions sees potential growth opportunity for themselves:
- Wall Street advances as tech bounces further off of recent losses
- Tuesday, 10 February 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Oil prices steady as Iran-US tensions and US data eyed
- Bond Market Faces Historic Shock As Mag 7 Giants Turn Cash Flow Negative To Fund Capex Tsunami
- US import prices unchanged year-on-year in December
- US labor costs growth cools in fourth quarter
- Is the US in a hiring recession?
- Fed minions shrug off job hiring data, think their monetary policies are perfectly set:
- Fed's Logan: 'cautiously optimistic' that current rate-setting will do the job
- Fed's Hammack says interest rates could be on hold 'for quite some time'
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
- Stronger yen developing in Japan after elections:
- ECB minions worried about tariff inflation in Eurozone, bigger trouble developing in the Eurozone:
- Euro zone inflation to take hit from tariffs but rate cuts could offset, ECB economists find
- German auto industry in 'crisis' as investments, jobs move abroad, lobby says
- S&P 500, Nasdaq end lower after the latest retail sales data
- Wednesday, 11 February 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- US job growth accelerates, unemployment rate falls to 4.3%
- US employment growth through March revised down by 862,000 jobs
- US job growth surges in January, but labor market far from turning around
- What the U.S. nonfarm payrolls shocker says about the economy
- Oil rises 2% on US–Iran tensions, improved demand
- Fed minions expected to hold interest rates steady for now, to finally get around to dealing with troubled banks, not sure productivity will improve enough to lower inflation from the level they haven't admitted they've been targeting:
- Fed's interest rate pause bolstered by jobs data, but concerns linger
- US Fed to review previously flagged bank shortcomings, memo says
- Fed's Schmid says too soon to expect productivity to fix still-elevated inflation
- Bigger trouble, less deflation developing in China:
- China's auto sales fall at fastest pace in nearly two years in January
- China makes small dent in deflation battle as supply-demand imbalance persists
- BOJ minions laying out their plans for interest rate hikes and inflation slows and yen strengthens:
- BOJ could hike rates as early as March, up to 3 times in 2026, Mizuho executive says
- Japan's wholesale inflation slows, weak yen pressures import costs
- Yen pushes towards best week in a year on 'Buy Japan' talk
- Bigger trouble developing in the Eurozone:
- Wall Street ends muted after strong jobs data nibbles at Fed rate cut bet
- Thursday, 12 February 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Oil prices edge lower as IEA reduces demand forecast
- A year on from DeepSeek shock, get set for flurry of low-cost Chinese AI models
- US existing home sales drop to more than two-year low in January
- Trump revokes basis of US climate regulation, ends vehicle emission standards
- Fed minions expected to deliver rate cuts in mid-year:
- China fighting deflation, dealing with trade restrictions and crop shortfalls:
- China targets value-driven auto market with new pricing rules, safety standards
- Exclusive: US-China trade detente fuels mothballing of key China tech curbs
- Exclusive: China buyers snap up U.S. sorghum, Australian barley as domestic corn supply tightens
- Bigger trouble developing in Japan:
- ECB minions gearing up to leave Eurozone interest rates unchanged for longer, ready to grow their bailout business:
- ECB to extend its longest interest rate pause since below zero days
- ECB to broaden access to euro backstop, board member says
- Nasdaq ended lower by 2% as Wall Street slid ahead of upcoming inflation data
- Friday, 13 February 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Headline and core CPI inflation rates cool Y/Y in January
- US, Taiwan finalise deal to cut tariffs, boost purchases of US goods
- Oil prices stable as investors weigh OPEC+ supply, US inflation data
- Fed minions expected to cut U.S. interest rates in June 2026 after favorable inflation data:
- Bigger trouble developing in China:
- China January new loans jump but miss forecasts as weak demand persists
- China's new home prices extend decline as weak demand hounds sector
- China's supercharged gold trading looks like 'speculative bubble,' Capital Economics says
- BOJ minions get better inflation data, still planning to hike Japan's interest rates:
- Japan's core inflation likely eased in January for 2nd straight month
- Hawkish Bank of Japan policymaker signals rate-hike chance 'this spring'
- ECB minions say Eurozone minions should have more power over financiers:
- S&P 500 ends up slightly as tech dips, inflation cools
The CME Group's FedWatch Tool continued projecting the Fed will keep holding the Federal Funds Rate steady until 17 June (2026-Q2) when it gives an 87% probability of a quarter point rate cut. The tool also continues to anticipate the next quarter point reduction will take place on 16 September (2026-Q3). While these expectations have been stable over the past several weeks, what's new this week is that there is now a greater than even probability of a third rate cut in the offing, coming on 9 December (2026-Q4), thanks to the lower-than-expected inflation reported for January 2026.
The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow toolestimates real GDP growth in the U.S. during 2025-Q4 declined to $3.7% from the +4.2% growth expected in the prior week.
Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear, both wearing suits, watching a roulette wheel come to a stop with the ball falling in a slot labeled 'VALUE STOCKS' as the bear says 'It wasn't going to keep landing on AI'".
Shiraz Robinson is a grad student in data science at the University of Virginia, who came to our attention shortly after the Christmas holiday for his Merry Christmans equations. Unfortunately, that was too late to feature his tradition of blending math formulas and holiday celebrations together, at least for that holiday, but he's back in time for Valentine's Day with another holiday-appropriate math formula!
Here's the equation, suitable for sharing with that special someone who appreciates math as much as you do! And before you ask, yes, it's safe for work....
x² + [y - (x²)¹/³]² = 1
While the mathematically inclined will immediately interpret this equation of love, others may need to plot it on a graph to truly appreciate its romantic message. We recommend checking out this GeoGebra version because you can play with the parameters d'amour.
Update 18 February 2026: Or, if you prefer to leave the math to others (and use a fancier equation), there's this video!
Previously on Political Calculations
Labels: math
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