The outlook for the S&P 500's dividends in future quarters generally trended for the worse over the past four weeks since our last snapshot was taken.
Once again, the quarter-by-quarter changes present something of a mixed picture for investors. The outlook improved by a small amount for the current quarter of 2025-Q2. The more distant future quarters of 2025-Q3 and 2025-Q4 however were decidedly negative.
Here's a quick summary of how they changed and what the expectations are as of the close of trading on Tuesday, 15 March 2025.
- 2025-Q1: Decrease of $0.01, finalizing at $20.33 per share
- 2025-Q2: Increase of $0.20, rising to $19.05 per share
- 2025-Q3: Decrease of $0.19 to $18.96 per share
- 2025-Q4: Decrease of $0.76 to $18.84 per share
Since these are snapshots, they don't quite capture the magnitude of how much the S&P 500's dividend outlook has been changing over this period, particularly in the period since 2 April 2025. For example, from 14 March 2025 up to that date, the dividend outlook for 2025-Q4 had held within a relatively narrow range between $19.50 per share and $19.65 per share. From 3 April 2025 through 15 April 2025, the amount of dividends expected to be paid out in the final quarter of 2025 has ranged between $18.00 and $19.63. Dividend futures for 2025-Q4 have been rebounding since hitting that low of $18.00 on 7 April 2025.
The following animated chart shows how expectations for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share changed in the month from 14 March 2025 to 15 April 2025. If you're reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to see the animation.
How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in 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 2025-Q2 began on Saturday, 22 March 2025 and will end on Friday, 20 June 2025.
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.
Labels: dividends, forecasting, SP 500
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Closing values for previous trading day.
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