Hi all, just want to put this up here for discussion. We get many feedback asking for the ability to see dividend prediction and also a dividend calendar (which may or may not include prediction). So my understanding is the features should include:
The ability to see dividend (or income) prediction for the next 12 months (at the very least)
Breakdown of total dividend by holding based on each month for the next 12 months
Yearly, monthly, and weekly total
Basic dividend information: DPS,
Graphs i.e vertical bar chart showing forecasted dividend by month
Calendar format to view this information
Ability to sync to Apple or Google Calendar?
Dividend growth rate, dividend yield, and other ratio/metrics?
Uncertainty rating? Just throwing out there i.e companies with stable/growing earnings and a fix payout policy with have a higher predictability on future income than companies that just started paying dividend and has less predictable/cyclical earnings.
Do I miss anything? And just curious what do you do with this information? For example, once you have a good sense of how much dividend you’re getting month by month over the next 12 months, what do you do with those information. Do you factor that into your personal budget? Adjust your investment allocation to increase forecast dividends? Or something else?
That’s a great start, Ricky.
In relation to use of the information - personally, its a great way to forecast portfolio income and to also benchmark portfolio’s dividend yield vs the broader indices (relevant for income investors).
Hi @RoKa, thanks for the feedback. Correct me if I got your message wrong. So you want to be able to see the next 12 months forecasted portfolio income, presumably break down by monthly & individual holding? And the ability to compare the forecast portfolio dividend yield against a benchmark dividend yield i.e SPY, is that correct? If the portfolio yield is way behind your target or against benchmark, do you consider rebalance the portfolio composition?
I referred a friend to Sharesight and one of his earliest observations was the future income report is terrible. I have to agree. The Report description says it can forecast 1 or 3 years out. But it only forecasts declared dividends rather than assuming the company will continue to pay dividends during the forecast period. Which renders the report 100% meaningless. Providing a total of the forecast payments by quarter or in aggregate would be an obviously useful addition. Or am I not using this report correctly??
Hi @DavidW just moving your post to an existing one. You’re right. The current Future Income Report only shows dividends that have been announced to the market. We are working on a dividend forecast feature.
Are you able to give some details on what do you like to see? Thanks!
Hi Ricky and thank you for moving me to an existing chat.
I would use the document to determine what cash flow my portfolio is going to generate in the next year based on the annualization of the current dividend rate. Or in the case of a covered instrument potentially assuming the continuation of the prior year dividend. Knowing that it is likely going to be understated as most of my holdings will increase their dividend during the course of the year. But at least it gives me what my current portfolio will produce over the next year before any dividend increases.
The key I believe is to provide a 12 month forecast for ALL equity based portfolio holdings that offer a distribution/dividend.
Hi @DavidW thanks for the feedback. Do you use this mostly for budgeting/personal finance or some other purpose? And is it more of a ‘good to know’ information or do you use this information to potentially change your investments?
I asked because some told me they like to have a monthly estimated dividends to help them with budget/expense planning + potentially changing their investment allocation (i.e rebalancing) if the monthly (or yearly) estimates are behind their long-term financial goal, for example. So just curious more about your use case. Thanks.
I think it would be primarily for cashflow forecasting purposes. To make changes to my portfolio I back date alternative investments in a fake portfolio and look at the total return. So it would be unlikely if I used this report for determining changes to investments. What I would say is the current report is not useful as it can only forecast out 3 or 4 months so I would suggest making the obvious changes now rather than over analyze potential changes
It might be a useful report if it also converts all income to the base currency (say using current exchange rate) and if it provides a total for future periods (I think total income for each future month might be useful).
But would I vote for this over fixing some other areas (eg the lack of connection between an investment and the cash account it works with) not on your life!
I would find this super useful and time-saving - I currently have two separate spreadsheets - one to advise when dividends are due - just an overall glimpse - basically, the ticker code listed in each month of the year it pays dividends. It helps me determine which shares to increase my holding by, to take advantage of the upcoming dividends. It also helps me prepare for early retirement - by building a portfolio that provides monthly income. As I am invested in companies that pay monthly, quarterly and half-yearly this comes in handy.
My second spreadsheet I create manually, I put in the predicted dividend (based on an average of the historic dividends for that period of the particular share). I then update it when the dividend is declared for a more accurate result. That way I can determine my total cash inflow for the year. However, whilst providing some good upfront information, this is very time consuming. It then links to an overall page, which is an overview of all the dividends I have received over time - broken down into the financial year, also based on my inception date by year and then a comparison of earnings each year per month to determine that I am creating an ever-growing amount of dividends to hopefully replace my current wage. This combination assists immensely as I currently do not participate in DRPS, so that I can re-invest into the next up-coming dividend paying stocks and reap more dividends to continue the cycle.
Further, I still utilise the current upcoming dividends report - so that it confirms the figures I have calculated in my spreadsheet. So would find it useful to keep as a drop-down and the dividend forecast & Calendar as another option.