A dividend is a cash payment a company or fund distributes to shareholders, usually from earnings (for companies) or from a mix of income and option premium (for funds — see below). Yield is just that payment annualized and divided by the current share price: a stock paying $4/year at a $100 share price has a 4% yield. The catch — yield moves with price even if the payout doesn't change. A stock that falls 50% with no dividend cut just doubled its yield. High yield alone tells you nothing about whether that's a bargain or a warning sign; you have to know why the yield is high.

Three dates, in order: Ex-dividend date — buy the stock on or after this date and you do NOT get the upcoming payment; the seller does. This is the date that actually matters for "do I get paid." Record date — the company checks its books on this date to see who's officially a shareholder (usually 1 business day after ex-date, mostly an internal bookkeeping formality). Payment date — when the cash actually lands in your account, often weeks after the ex-date. The Calendar tab on this page shows estimated payment dates, not ex-dividend dates.

DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) automatically uses your dividend cash to buy more shares instead of paying it out to you. It compounds — more shares means a bigger next payment, which buys even more shares. The Calculator tab on this page lets you toggle DRIP on/off to see the difference over time. The tradeoff: DRIP works against you if the stock is falling, since you're buying more shares at a falling price with every payment — there's no "pause reinvesting" switch built into most DRIP programs.

"Dividend Aristocrat" is a specific index label (S&P 500 companies with 25+ consecutive years of dividend increases) — it's an assigned title, not something derived from the payment data itself. This page instead computes a real consecutive-increase streak directly from each ticker's actual payment history. A name can sit in the "Aristocrats" category by ticker curation while showing a streak of 0 in the table — that's not a bug, that's the honest number (e.g. a stock whose payout has been frozen for years, even if it's a well-known blue-chip name).

REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are legally required to distribute most of their taxable income to shareholders to keep their tax-advantaged status — that's why yields run higher than typical stocks. Monthly payment is common because REIT income (rent) comes in steadily rather than in lumpy quarterly bursts. Canadian REITs lean monthly even more than US ones — see the TSX Monthly-Pay REITs category.

BDCs (Business Development Companies) lend money to, or take equity stakes in, smaller/private companies that can't easily access public debt markets — think a publicly-traded private-credit fund. Like REITs, they're required to distribute most of their income. The key risk difference: BDC income is tied to how well their loan book performs, so yield and payout can swing hard with credit conditions — a recession hits BDC distributions much harder than it hits a REIT collecting rent from long-term leases.

These funds (JEPI, QYLD, the BMO/Hamilton/Harvest TSX funds, etc.) hold a stock or index position and repeatedly sell call options against it, collecting the option premium as income on top of (or instead of) normal dividends. The tradeoff: selling calls caps your upside if the underlying rallies hard, and some of these funds' "yield" partly includes return of capital rather than pure income — meaning part of every payment can just be your own money coming back to you, which lowers the fund's NAV over time. High yield here reflects fund structure, not free money.

These are usually single-stock options-income funds (e.g. a fund that sells options against just NVDA, or just MSTR) paying weekly instead of monthly or quarterly. Because the income is driven entirely by that one stock's option premium — which spikes when the stock is volatile and shrinks when it's calm — the actual dollar amount paid out swings a lot week to week, unlike a REIT or blue-chip's steady payment. These are also the newest funds on this page, so there's the least real history to judge them by.

A stock whose yield looks great because the price has been falling — but the price is falling for a real reason (declining business, too much debt, industry decline), and the dividend eventually gets cut too, which usually causes the price to fall even further. The pattern to watch for: rising yield driven by a falling price rather than a growing payout, combined with a high payout ratio (dividends eating up most or all of earnings) and no free cash flow cushion.

In the US, "qualified" dividends from most regular companies get taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rate, provided you've held the stock long enough. REIT, BDC, and most covered-call fund distributions are typically taxed as ordinary income instead — often at a meaningfully higher rate. This is general information, not tax advice — how a specific fund's distributions get classified can vary and sometimes isn't even known until year-end tax slips arrive.

Eligible dividends from Canadian corporations get preferential tax treatment via the Canadian dividend tax credit — this generally does NOT apply to REIT distributions (taxed as ordinary income) or to US-listed stocks. Separately, US dividends paid into certain registered Canadian accounts can be subject to US withholding tax depending on account type — this varies by account and isn't something to assume either way without checking. General information only — a tax professional can confirm how this applies to your specific accounts.