The outlook for the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) quarterly dividends per share has continued to improve over the last several weeks.
Beyond simply reporting on that trend, we can now provide a first look at how the index' quarterly dividends payouts are expected to come in throughout each quarter of 2025!
For good measure, we can also show how those expectations have changed since the morning of 5 November 2024. This period coincides with the strongest rally in the S&P 500 in more than a year, which recently saw the index break through the 6,000 level for an all-time high record close.
All these things are shown in the following animated chart, which shows the snapshots we have of the outlook for the S&P 500's dividends on both 5 November 2024 and 15 November 2024.
How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future affects stock prices is described by this math.
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-Q4 began on Saturday, 21 September 2024 and will end on Friday, 20 December 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.
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.