selling on ex dividend day

LAMR goes ex-dividend this coming Friday (march 18th). If I sell my shares that are held in my Etrade account on the 18th, I assume I will lose the dividend? Even though the transaction probably won’t clear until next week?

LAMR goes ex-dividend this coming Friday (march 18th). If I sell my shares that are held in my Etrade account on the 18th, I assume I will lose the dividend?

“ex-dividend” means without the dividend. Therefore, if you owned it before the ex-date you get the dividend.

An annoying thing: If you have enabled dividend reinvesting and sell on or after the ex-date but before the pay date, you will get some fractional shares in your account on the pay-date. I have more than one stock in my account with like 0.127 shares, because of this.

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From a google search:

Once the company sets the record date, the ex-dividend date is set based on stock exchange rules. The ex-dividend date for stocks is usually set one business day before the record date. If you purchase a stock on its ex-dividend date or after, you will not receive the next dividend payment. Instead, the seller gets the dividend. If you purchase before the ex-dividend date, you get the dividend.

But if you sell today the settlement date is two business days later. Is it the order date or the settlement date?

Also note that at the x moment the market price is reduced by the dividend amount. Essentially the question is do you want it taxable in cash, or in share value. At the x moment its a wash for value.

Order date. Settlement date does not matter. In fact the SEC has been shortening the settlement period anyway. Used to be T+3, then T+2, now I think they will make it T+1 soon. (T = order date, + n = number of days allowed for settlement.)

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But if you sell today the settlement date is two business days later.

I believe that’s why they designate the ex-dividend date.
Dividends are paid/assigned to owner of record as of some date.
The ex-dividend date occurs before that to allow for settlement.

If you purchase before the ex-dividend date, your trade will settle in time for you be the owner of record when the dividends are assigned.

thanx, I appreciate the responses.

I never paid too much attention to the trading on ex-dividend days. If I needed to roll over covered call options, I did that several days before. So on the 18th I noticed LAMR opened down about $1.10…just what the dividend was. It did recover a lot of that later on in the day, maybe just moving with the market. Anyways, I’ll be watching their earnings in early May, decide then whether to jump back in.