The outlook for the S&P 500's dividends through 2026 has improved in the month since we last presented our previous snapshot of their future. For the most part, they have improved with the 2026-Q1 looking to show the biggest jump.

Before we go any farther, we're referring to future quarters as they apply to dividend futures contracts, not regular calendar quarters! For dividend futures contracts, 2026-Q1 begins on Saturday, 20 December 2025 and will end on the third Friday of March 2026.

Here is our summary of how the outlook for the S&P 500's dividends has changed in the past month for the final quarter of 2025 and the upcoming four quarters of 2026:

• 2025-Q4: Decrease of $0.03, declining to $19.91 per share
• 2026-Q1: Increase of $0.57, rising to $21.46 per share
• 2026-Q2: Increase of $0.01, rising to $19.74 per share
• 2026-Q3: Increase of $0.14, rising to $20.01 per share
• 2026-Q4: No change, holding at $19.79 per share

The following animated chart shows how expectations for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share changed in the month from 14 November 2025 to 15 December 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.

This is our last update for 2025, our next snapshot will be taken in mid-January 2026. Because it will soon be very relevant, be sure to read the "More About Dividend Futures Data" section, which explains why the quarterly dividends Standard and Poor will report for the S&P 500 are different from dividend futures data. We anticipate S&P will report the index' quarterly dividends for the calendar quarter of 2025-Q4 early in 2026.

More About Dividend Futures Data

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.

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-Q4 began on Saturday, 20 September 2025 and will end on this Friday, 19 December 2025. From the perspective of dividend futures, 2026-Q1 will become the current quarter on Saturday, 20 December 2025.

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.

Delayed trade data has started to flow out from the U.S. Census Bureau. More than a month behind schedule, the latest data on trade between the U.S. and China is for September 2025. As expected, the total value of goods exchanged between the two nations slipped for the second month, falling from $33.4 billion in the previous month to $31.8 billion.

That's a net figure. U.S. exports to China were up from August 2025's level, rising $108 million to $8.38 billion. That gain was offset by a much larger decline in the value of goods exported from China to the U.S. in September, which fell by $1.71 billion to $23.41 billion.

The trailing twelve month average, which smooths out annual seasonality in the trade data, declined to $40.0 billion in September 2025. This figure is $9.6 billion, or 19.6%, below our counterfactual projection of what the level of trade between the U.S. and China would have been during the month in the absence of the global tariff war, had trade between the nations continued growing at the rate it was between March 2024 and March 2025.

The following chart presents the monthly data for the combined value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China along with its trailing twelve month average in the period from January 2017 through September 2025.

The U.S. and China struck a new truce in the tariff war on 1 November 2025. This new deal lowered tariffs considerably more than their earlier 28 June deal, but we won't see its effect in the data until November 2025's data becomes available early in 2026.

Because of that deal's timing, we anticipate another negative month or two for U.S.-China trade data when October 2025's data is finally reported. Though it has not yet been scheduled, we anticipate that data will become available in the first weeks of January 2026. It's possible it may be reported along with the data for November 2026 as the Census Bureau gets fully caught up.

Despite lacking the full detail of the U.S.' import/export data, we do know that China reported a more-than-$1 trillion surplus in its trade with the world in in year-to-date. This record level was achieved because of China's falling level of trade with the U.S. and because China's domestic economy has struggled to grow during 2025.

That's possible because the ongoing negative impact of the U.S.-China tariff war and China's lack of domestic demand has resulted in Chinese producers having more goods available to export elsewhere. Which they have, because Chinese producers are facing a cash crunch and need the money.

Their actions are becoming a flashpoint in the regions where China is shipping its excess production. In particular, the European Union is threatening to impose new retaliatory tariffs against China's exporters, on top of its recent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles that have been flooding into the EU.

China's economic situation has worsened enough that China's official government data can no longer conceal it. Here are headlines from 14 December 2025:

• China's Economy Is Deteriorating on Several Fronts
• China's economy stalls in November as calls grow for reform
• Xi Blasts "Reckless" Projects Exaggerating Growth After China Reveals Dismal Macro Data For November

How the imbalances that resulted in these headlines get settled will be one of the bigger economic themes of 2026. Stay tuned!

References

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with China, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Online database]. Accessed 19 November 2025.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon showing Chinese container ships labeled 'Made in China' being diverted with large arrows away from the United States and toward other regions such as Europe, Africa, and South America". Sadly, in the original image produced by this prompt, Copilot didn't produce anything that looked like the actual continent of South America, oddly choosing to instead rename sub-Saharan Africa as "South America". The image still sort-of worked for our editorial purposes after several minor fixes, but we miss South America and urge Copilot to both acknowledge its existence and give the continent its due.

After the Fed acted to cut the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter point on Wednesday, 10 December 2025, the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) went on to strike a new record high of 6,901.00 on Thursday, 11 December 2025. But the index retreated the next day as new fears arose about the outlook for earnings of firms making big AI-technology investments. The S&P 500 ultimately ended down 0.6% from the previous week's close, settling at 6,827.41 by the close of trading on Friday, 12 December 2025.

After the Fed reduced the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter point to a target range of 3.50-3.75%, investors had no reason to continue focusing on the current quarter of 2025-Q4. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool outlook for 2026 indicates investors anticipate future quarter point rate cuts on 18 March (2026-Q1) and 29 July (2026-Q3), with no other rate cuts projected beyond that date.

While these changes suggest investors would shift their focus to either 2026-Q1 or 2026-Q3 as they set current day stock prices, the trajectory of the S&P 500 in the past week instead indicates they are focusing on the distant future quarter of 2026-Q2 in setting current day stock prices. The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows that shift with the trajectory of the S&P 500 pacing the dividend futures-based model's projections of what the level of the S&P 500 would be expected if investors are focusing on this future quarter.

Here are the market-moving headlines investors absorbed during the week that was.

Monday, 8 December 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil falls amid ongoing Ukraine talks, ahead of expected US interest rate cut
• US container imports drop 7.8% in November amid China demand slump, Descartes Systems says
• Fed minions to get new leadership:
• Fed could find itself in a bind as it sets the stage for Powell's successor
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• China's car sales extend decline in November in biggest drop in 10 months
• Macron Warns EU May Hit China With Tariffs Over Trade Surplus
• China's exports top expectations on strong sales to non-US markets
• China's Trade Surplus Tops $1tn Mark As Exports Rebound Despite Tariffs
• Bigger trouble developing in Japan:
• Japan's third-quarter GDP contraction worsens on weak capex
• Japan's October real wages fall for 10th month despite upbeat nominal pay
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
• German corporate bankruptcies to surge to a decade high in 2025
• ECB minions thinking about maybe hiking Eurozone interest rates:
• ECB must be vigilant about some upside risks to inflation, Kazimir says
• ECB's next move may be a hike, but not anytime soon, Schnabel tells Bloomberg News
• Wall Street finished in the red ahead of a pivotal Federal Reserve meeting
• US stocks end lower as investors wait for Fed rate decision

Tuesday, 9 December 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US bank executives say AI will boost productivity, cut jobs
• US container imports drop 7.8% in November amid China demand slump, Descartes Systems says
• US job openings rise slightly after surging in September; fewer workers quitting their jobs
• Oil settles down 1%, focus on Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Fed
• Fed minions to deliver a lot of whinging after getting new leadership:
• Fed faces turbulent 2026 as Powell's term ends, independence tested
• Investors warm up for long spell of discordant Fed
• Trump says support for interest rate cuts is key test for Fed chair nominee
• Bigger trouble developing in China:
• Beijing Data Blackout Raising Alarm Bells About China's Economy
• Chief BOJ minion developing skill for understatement:
• BOJ Governor Ueda says rises in long-term interest rates 'somewhat rapid'
• ECB minions thinking about doing QE "passively" and making banking regulations "simpler", but not "looser":
• Will ECB's 'good place' turn into passive easing?
• Exclusive: ECB backs simpler, not looser, bank rules, sources say
• S&P 500 edges down as investors await Fed rate decision
• Wall Street ended mixed in a muted session ahead of the upcoming FOMC decision

Wednesday, 10 December 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil steadies ahead of Ukraine peace talks and Fed interest rate decision
• US labor cost growth slows in third quarter as labor market conditions soften
• US home price rises to stay modest as mortgage rates stick
• Headlines before the Fed minions' rate cut:
• https://www.reuters.com/business/fed-expected-cut-rates-may-signal-coming-pause-2025-12-10/
• Wall St futures slip ahead of Fed meeting, 2026 cuts in doubt
• Headlines after the Fed minions' rate cut:
• Divided Fed lowers rates, signals pause and one cut next year as growth rebounds
• Fed rate decision sees most dissents since September 2019
• Fed's Powell says rate policy well positioned, future of policy not on pre-set course
• Fed says it will start technical buying of Treasury bills to manage market liquidity
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China's deflationary strains persist even as consumer inflation hits 21-month high
• EU firms in China accelerating supply chain diversification, report finds
• IMF urges China to take the 'brave choice': curb exports, boost consumption
• BOJ minions expected by economists to deliver more rate hikes, bigger trouble developing in Japan:
• BOJ to hike rates to 0.75% in Dec, 1.0% by next Sept, majority of economists say
• Japan Might Be A Bomb Ready To Explode-- Why You Should Care
• ECB minions see growth ahead, expected to do nothing with Eurozone interest rates:
• ECB may lift growth outlook again, Lagarde says
• ECB to stay on hold through end of 2026 on expected stable economic outlook: Reuters poll
• Wall Street indexes rally after Fed cuts interest rates
• Dow reaches 48K level for the first time since Nov. after FOMC cuts 25 bps

Thursday, 11 December 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil retreats as investors' focus on Ukraine, US fuel supplies
• OPEC data indicate close oil supply-demand balance in 2026, no glut
• US September trade deficit lowest in more than five years as goods exports soar
• Major automakers say China poses 'clear and present threat' to US auto industry
• Fed minions gearing up for relaunch of Quantitative Easing:
• New York Fed desk plans to conduct purchases worth over $54 billion over next month
• Bigger stimulus developing in China:
• China promises fiscal boost next year, recognises 'prominent' imbalance
• BOJ minions not sure they should act to stave off higher interest rates in Japan:
• Bank of Japan reluctant to intervene on rising yields, sources say
• S&P and Dow end at record levels, Oracle pulls Nasdaq lower
• S&P 500 notches first record high close since October
• Oracle forecasts miss Wall Street targets while spending rises

Friday, 12 December 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil inches lower on oversupply concerns, on track for weekly loss
• Fed minions worry about inflation, say rate cut was right move:
• Fed dissenters cite inflation risk in votes against rate cut
• Fed's Hammack would prefer tighter policy given too high inflation
• Fed's Paulson says monetary policy still working to cool inflation
• Fed's Daly says this week's rate cut was right move for Fed
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China's November new loans miss forecast as housing slump persists
• Focus: China's small bank mergers shrink sector but raise financial risks
• BOJ minions really thinking about going forward with plan to hike Japan's interest rates:
• Exclusive: BOJ to pledge more rate hikes at next week's policy meeting
• Japan's core inflation likely held at 3.0% in November: Reuters poll
• ECB minions hear about 'geopolitical risk impact' and want to know more about it as EU minions want to give Russian money frozen in EU banks to Ukraine:
• ECB to quiz 110 banks on geopolitical risk impact
• Explainer: How does the EU want to use Russia's frozen assets for Ukraine?
• Wall Street ends lower; fears of AI bubble and inflation send investors away
• Nasdaq, S&P 500 end week with losses as AI trade tumbles led by Broadcom guidance fears
• Broadcom stock falls as management warns of margin pressures

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool projection of real GDP growth in the U.S. during the recently ended 2025-Q3 ticked up from +3.5% last week to +3.6%. The tool won't shift to forecast 2025-Q4's GDP until 23 December 2025, which coincides with when the BEA's official initial estimate of GDP for 2025-Q3 will be released.

With the approaching holidays, we're anticipating little new market-moving news coming out after this upcoming week. Monday, 22 December 2025 will mark the final edition of our S&P 500 chaos series for 2025, with the next edition not arriving until Monday, 5 January 2026 after we come back from our annual weeklong hiatus.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear sitting in front of a fireplace drinking hot cocoa to celebrate the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates". We then ran second prompt to "Draw a cartoon thought bubble showing a balloon being popped by a pin", the result of which we added to the originally generated cartoon to show what the Wall Street bear is happy about.

The Inventions in Everything team celebrates the spirit of innovation, even when they fail to live up to the promises their inventors laid out in their patent applications. Usually, the IIE team focuses on the stories of inventions that were novel enough to be awarded patents, but today's feature is a truly failed invention that never made it past the patent application stage.

U.S. Patent Application 2008/0299533 A1 was filed on 4 June 2007. The application describes inventor Frank C. Orsini's vision of a "Naughty or Nice Meter", which would let children discover exactly how they stand in the eyes of Santa Claus.

That's right, the Santa Claus. Who, as we all know, determines whether or not any of the items listed on a child's Christmas wish list will ever show up among any gifts they open. Provided they don't forget to leave some cookies and milk out to snack on when he might visit.

All children have to do is submit their honest self-assessment of how well they've performed on twelve behavioral metrics, scoring each on a scale of 0-to-5, with the Naughty or Nice Meter tallying their total score to determine whether they qualify as naughty, nice, or something in between. Because apparently, Santa Claus believes these kinds of metrics are extremely valuable for assessing child performance and has chosen helpers who all aspire to work in the human resources department of a large, impersonal corporation to help him compile the records he needs to quantify their moral development.

To be fair, it could be worse. If the alternative is Santa Claus operating the most sophisticated personal surveillance system ever devised to actively and continuously monitor every person on the planet to find out who's really naughty and who's really nice, we should all be grateful of Orsini's proposed innovation. Here's a figure from the patent application we've colorized to give a sense of how the behavioral self-assessment might be presented to the child resource who needs their naughtiness/niceness score quantified:

Here are Orsini's suggested twelve metrics on which the child resource's morality might be assessed:

1. Listens to parents.
2. Tells the truth.
3. Says "Please" and "Thank You".
4. Eats all meals.
5. Has a Clean Room.
6. Helps around the house.
7. Completes homework on time.
8. Does well in school.
9. Follows Directions.
10. Plays nice with other children.
11. Respects others.
12. Goes to bed on time.

The Naughty and Nice Meter allows the user to input the scores into a calculator, which determines the child resource's final ranking. Orsini proposes the following scale, which closely resembles the kind of grading system you might have encountered in elementary school:

In any case, we can see why Orsini's Naughty or Nice Meter never became a patented invention. For an invention submitted in the 2000s, there's nothing truly patent-worthy about its physical manifestation, while its functionality relies on the previously patented technology of a calculator. The only thing really unique about it is the algorithm Orsini concocted for determining a Naughty/Nice score, but alas, algorithms are not patentable.

We can go on with our analytical critique, but we're afraid we'll have to leave shortly to meet with IIE's human resources department auditor. It seems we need to complete some kind of evaluation that will determine what our next year bonuses will be before the upcoming holiday break.

With the holiday season well underway, the following video from 2024 showing how a number of teens engaged in productive activities to help shoppers with gift wrapping services seems a good way to start our analysis of the teen employment situation.

Now, to the main story! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is slowly releasing the employment situation data that went unreported during the government shutdown fiasco. The data it reported for September 2025, which would have been reported at the beginning of October 2025 if not for a minority of Senators who obstructed a bill to fund the U.S. government's operations, shows that teen employment rebounded strongly in September 2025.

More remarkably, it was mostly led by younger teens, Age 16 and 17, whose seasonally adjusted numbers jumped from their August 2025 low. Older teens also had gains, which were solid, but paled in comparison to the numbers for younger teens.

The following chart captures the unexpected surge:

Unfortunately, there is a cloud on the horizon for teen employment. AI technology would appear set to decimate traditional teen employment opportunities in the years ahead:

For American teens, the summer job isn’t what it used to be. By 2030, it may barely exist at all. That’s the urgent finding from high school senior Karissa Tang, who spent the last 18 months researching how artificial intelligence is poised to reshape youth employment across the U.S.

Her work, conducted under the mentorship of UCLA Anderson’s Professor Geis, breaks the debate down to actual numbers that should alarm policymakers and parents alike. According to her analysis, AI will displace over 770,000 teen jobs by the end of the decade, gutting 27% of the most common positions teens hold today....

Tang’s paper, “The Impact of AI on American Teenage Employment by 2030”, tracks ten job categories that make up just over half of all teen employment. Her method connects market forecasts for specific automation and AI-powered tools, such as self-checkout systems or restaurant kiosks, to how many people each system replaces.

Tang identifies cashier jobs as especially vulnerable, with AI-programmed kiosks enabling a 54% decline.

But Tang sees where teens may have advantages over older members of the work force:

While it might be easy to assume AI hits all workers equally, Tang argues that’s a mistake. Teens often perform narrower tasks, have less experience, and earn lower wages, she explains. That makes them especially replaceable, or, in some cases, worth keeping precisely because they cost less.

“The ‘teen advantage’ is that they cost less,” Tang notes. “So for companies who are looking at AI to help cut costs, they may choose to lay off a higher proportion of older workers.”

It could be that younger teens may see disproportionate gains in the job market of the future.