Accounting: What the Numbers Mean 11th Edition by Wayne McManus,Daniel Viele,David Marshall

Exercise 11

Ex-dividend date-market price effect Find a list of common stock ex-dividend date data. You can go, via Google, to wsj.com. Under the Markets tab, select Market Data; then click on the arrow next to U.S. Stocks to open the pull down menu and select Dividends under the Stocks and Trading Statistics category. Scroll down to the Dividend Declarations Table, which includes the relevant ex-dividend dates. Select several stocks, preferably of large and well-known companies. Go to a stock listing on the ex-dividend date and determine what happened to the market price of a share of stock on that date. Does this price action make sense? Explain your answer.