The dividend outlook for the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) turned negative for the current quarter of 2026-Q3 since our August 2026 snapshot.
Projected dividends for 2026-Q3 dropped $0.37 per share during the intervening month. The CME Group's S&P 500 dividend futures for the quarter dropped to $20.65 per share as higher dividends that previously had been expected failed to materialize. Even so, the dividend futures data indicates 2026-Q3's dividends will still register around a dollar per share increase year-over-year by the time 2026-Q3's dividend futures contracts finally expire.
Meanwhile, the outlook for more distant future quarters was more positive. Dividends in each of the upcoming quarters from 2026-Q4 through 2027-Q3 now expected to be slightly higher than what dividend futures forecast last month.
Here is the summary of how the expected future for the S&P 500's dividends changed between 14 August and 14 September 2026:
- 2026-Q3: Decrease of $0.37 to $20.65 per share
- 2026-Q4: Increase of $0.06 to $21.61 per share
- 2027-Q1: Increase of $0.04 to $22.85 per share
- 2027-Q2: Increase of $0.06 to $21.66 per share
- 2027-Q3: Increase of $0.04 to $21.85 per share
The following chart illustrates the expectations for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share as of 14 August 2026 and how they compare with the preceding quarters going back to 2024-Q3.
More About Dividend Futures
Dividend futures represent the quantified expectations investors have for the future income they will realize from owning shares of stocks, which in turn, affects how investors set current day stock prices. How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in current day stock prices as represented by the value of the S&P 500 index is described by this math.
Dividend futures for the index indicate the market capitalization-weighted amount of dividends per share for all these dividend-paying stocks that are expected to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter's dividend futures contracts. These contracts 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-Q3 began on Saturday, 20 June 2026 and will officially end on Friday, 18 September 2026. Since the expectations for this quarter's dividend payouts can change all the way up to that final date, it counts as a future quarter all the way up through that future point in time. The next quarter of 2026-Q4 will then begin on Saturday, 19 September 2026 and will run through Friday, 18 December 2026.
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.
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
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