Ex-dividend date: How long do I have to hold a stock in order to get the next dividend?
You only have to own it for a day (or rather for some amount of time before the close of trading the day before the ex-dividend date).  This is governed by exchange rules based on the date of record and payable date set by the company.  You might want to look at this article or this one for more details. It should be difficult to make money from changes due to the dividend distribution since it is well known and expected.  The exchanges have established rules for handling the various details that can come up, and traders account for the change where appropriate (as in option pricing).  Also, note that the favorable U.S. tax treatment of dividends requires a 60-day ownership period for the stock.
You can buy dividend stocks, just buy and hold. you will get cash or extra stock every quarter. You can also sell covered calls on your dividend stocks, this will give you even more cash. you can also... actually this rabbit hole goes very deep. just stick with my first sentence. You should not have to wait 3 days to sell the stock after purchase. If you are trading with a cash account you will have to wait for the sale to settle (3 business days) before you can use those funds to purchase other stock. If you meet the definition of a pattern day trader which is 4 or more day trades in 5 business days then your brokerage will require you to have a minimum of $25,000 in funds and a margin account. The dividend goes to he who owns the stock when it goes ex-div. A buyer (the call buyer who exercises) will not exercise unless the stock plus dividend are in the money. Otherwise they'd be buying the stock at a premium.  I like the scenario your friend doesn't. If I can find a high dividend stock and sell the call for a decent price, I may get a great return on a stock that's gone down 5% over a year's time. If it goes up and called away, that's fine too, it means a profit. Dividends. There are blue chip companies that have paid and raised their dividends for 20 or more years. As an example: Altria (MO). There are also ETFs that specialize in such stocks such as SDY. 1) What's the point of paying a dividend if the stock price   automatically decreases? Don't the shareholders just break even? When the company earns cash beyond what is needed for expenses, the value of the firm increases. As a shareholder, you own a piece of that increased value as soon as the company earns it. When the dividend is paid, the value of the firm decreases, but you break even on the dividend transaction. The benefit to you in holding the company's shares is the continually increasing value, whether paid out to you, or retained. Be careful not to confuse the value of the firm with the stock price. The stock price is ever-changing, in the short-term driven mostly by investor emotion. Over the long term, by far the largest effect on stock price is earnings. Take an extreme, and simplistic example. The company never grows or shrinks, earnings are always the same, there is no inflation :) , and they pay everything out in dividends. By the reasoning above, the firm value never changes, so over the long-term the stock price will never change, but you still get your quarterly dividends. Stock basically implies your ownership in the company. If you own 1% ownership in a company, the value of your stake becomes equal to 1% of the valuation of the entire company. Dividends are basically disbursal of company's profits to its shareholders. By holding stocks of a company, you become eligible to receiving dividends proportional to your ownership in the company. Dividends though are not guaranteed, as the company may incur losses or the management may decide to use the cash for future growth instead of disbursing it to the shareholders. For example, let's say a company called ABC Inc, is listed on NYSE and has a total of 1 million shares issued. Let's say if you purchase 100 stocks of ABC, your ownership in ABC will become Let's say that the share price at the time of purchase was $10 each. Total Investment = Stock Price * Number of Stocks Purchased = $10 * 100 = $1,000 Now, let's say that the company declares a dividend of $1 per share. Then,  Dividend Yield = Dividend/Stock Price = $1/$10 = 10% If one has to draw analogy with other banking products, one can think of stock and dividend as Fixed Deposits (analogous to stock) and the interest earned on the Fixed Deposit (analogous to dividend). "In the USA there are two ways this situation can be treated. First, if your short position was held less than 45 days. You have to (when preparing the taxes) add the amount of dividend back to the purchase price of the stock. That's called adjusting the basis. Example: short at $10, covered at $8, but during this time stock paid a $1 dividend. It is beneficial for you to add that $1 back to $8 so your stock purchase basis is $9 and your profit is also $1. Inside software (depending what you use) there are options to click on ""adjust the basis"" or if not, than do it manually specifically for those shares and add a note for tax reviewer. Second option is to have that ""dividednd payment in lieu paid"" deducted as investment expence. But that option is only available if you hold the shorts for more than 45 days and itemize your deductions. Hope that helps!" It is the first time I encounter redemption programme and I would like to know what are my options here You can hold on to the shares and automatically receive 2.25 SEK per share some time after 31-May; depending on how fast the company and its bank process the payouts. Alternatively you can trade in the said window for whatever the market is offering. how is this different from paying the dividend? I don't know much about Sweden laws. Structuring this way may be tax beneficial. The other benefit in in company's books the shareholders capital is reduced. can I trade these redemption shares during these 2 weeks in May? What is the point of trading them if they have fixed price? Yes you can. If you need money sooner ... generally the price will be discounted by few cents to cover the interest for the balance days. Two more esoteric differences, related to the same cause... When you have an outstanding debit balance in a margin the broker may lend out your securities to short sellers.  (They may well be able to lend them out even if there's no debit balance -- check your account agreement and relevant regulations).   You'll never know this (there's no indication in your account of it) unless you ask, and maybe not even then. If the securities pay out dividends while lent out, you don't get the dividends (directly).  The dividends go to the person who bought them from the short-seller.  The short-seller has to pay the dividend amount to his broker who pays them to your broker who pays them to you.  If the dividends that were paid out by the security were qualified dividends (15% max rate) the qualified-ness goes to the person who bought the security from the short-seller.  What you received weren't dividends at all, but a payment-in-lieu of dividends and qualified dividend treatment isn't available for them.   Some (many?  all?) brokers will pay you a gross-up payment to compensate you for the extra tax you had to pay due to your qualified dividends on that security not actually being qualified. A similar thing happens if there's a shareholder vote.  If the stock was lent out on the record date to establish voting eligibility, the person eligible to vote is the person who bought them from the short-seller, not you.  So if for some reason you really want/need to vote in a shareholder vote, call your broker and ask them to journal the shares in question over to the cash side of your account before the record date for determining voting eligibility. "Let me provide a general answer, that might be helpful to others, without addressing those specific stocks. Dividends are simply corporate payouts made to the shareholders of the company.  A company often decides to pay dividends because they have excess cash on hand and choose to return it to shareholders by quarterly payouts instead of stock buy backs or using the money to invest in new projects. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by ""dividend yield traps.""  If a company has declared an dividend for the upcoming quarter they will almost always pay.  There are exceptions, like what happened with BP, but these exceptions are rare.  Just because a company promises to pay a dividend in the approaching quarter does not mean that it will continue to pay a dividend in the future.  If the company continues to pay a dividend in the future, it may be at a (significantly) different amount. Some companies are structured where nearly all of there corporate profits flow through to shareholders via dividends.  These companies may have ""unusually"" high dividends, but this is simply a result of the corporate structure.    Let me provide a quick example: Certain ETFs that track bonds pay a dividend as a way to pass through interest payments from the underlying bonds back to the shareholder of the ETF. There is no company that will continue to pay their dividend at the present rate with 100% certainty.  Even large companies like General Electric slashed its dividend during the most recent financial crisis.  So, to evaluate whether a company will keep paying a dividend you should look at the following: Update: In regards to one the first stock you mentioned, this sentence from the companies of Yahoo! finance explains the ""unusually"" dividend: The company has elected to be treated as a REIT for federal income tax purposes and would not be subject to income tax, if it distributes at least 90% of its REIT taxable income to its share holders." Yes, as long as you own the shares before the ex-dividend date you will get the dividends. Depending on your instructions to your broker, you can receive cash dividends or you can have the dividends reinvested in more shares of the company. There are specific Dividend ReInvestment Plans (or DRIPs) if you are after stock growth rather than income from dividend payments. "Because I feel the answers given do not wholely represent the answer you are expecting, I'd like to re-iterate but include more information. When you own stock in a company, you OWN some of that company. When that company makes profit, you usually receive a dividend of those profits. If you owned 1% of the company stock, you (should) recieve 1% of the profits. If your company is doing well, someone might ask to buy your stock. The price of that stock is (supposed) to be worth a value representative of the expected yield or how much of a dividend you'd be getting.  The ""worth"" of that, is what you're betting on when you buy the stock, if you buy $100 worth of coca cola stock and they paid $10 as dividend, you'd be pretty happy with a 10% growth in your wealth. Especially if the banks are only playing 3%. So maybe some other guy sees your 10% increase and thinks, heck.. 10% is better than 3%, if I buy your stocks, even as much as 6% more than they are worth ($106) I'm still going to be better off by that extra 1% than I would be if I left it in the bank.. so he offers you $106.. and you think.. awesome.. I can sell my $100 of cola shares now, make a $6 profit and buy $100 worth of some other share I think will pay a good dividend. Then cola publicises their profits, and they only made 2% profit, that guy that bought your shares for $106, only got a dividend of $2 (since their 'worth' is still $100, and effectively he lost $4 as a result. He bet on a better than 10% profit, and lost out when it didn't hit that. Now, (IMHO) while the stock market was supposed to be about buying shares, and getting dividends, people (brokers) discovered that you could make far more money buying and selling shares for 'perceived value' rather than waiting for dividends to show actual value, especially if you were not the one doing the buying and selling (and risk), but instead making a 0.4% cut off the difference between each purchase (broker fees). So, TL;DR,  Many people have lost money in the market to those who made money from them. But only the traders and gamblers." I know that in the case of cash dividends I will get the dividend as long as I bought the stock before the ex-date but what happens in the case of an stock dividend? This is same as cash dividends. You would receive the additional stock. Stocks aren't just paper -- they're ownership of a company.  Getting cash from a stock that doesn't pay dividends basically means reducing your stake in the company. If the stock pays dividends, on the other hand, you still have the same shares, but now you have cash too.  You can choose to buy more of the company...or, more importantly, to use it elsewhere if that's what you want to do. No. You can sell anytime. I am in pedantic mode, sorry, the way the question is worded implies that you can sell only if it rises. You are welcome to sell at a loss, too.  Yes. The fund will not issue a dividend with every dividend it receives. It's more typical that they issue dividends quarterly. So the shares will increase by the amount of the undistributed dividends and on the ex-div date, drop by that amount. The remaining value goes up and down, of course, I am speaking only of the extra value created by the retained dividends.