Searching for stocks, funds that pay dividends may pay off
— -- Q: How do I find out if a stock or mutual fund pays a dividend? Can you use Templeton Foreign, TEMFX, as an example?
A:Before I answer your question, first a little bit on the difference between dividends and distribution.
Dividends are periodic payments made by various investments. Generally, when you speak of dividends, those are payments made by companies from their earnings. Dividends might be paid in cash or in stock to investors.
What do dividends mean for mutual fund investors? Mutual fund companies own thousands of stocks, many of which pay dividends. These dividends are accumulated by the mutual funds and then paid out to shareholders in the form of distributions.
When you're talking about mutual funds, remember distributions are just one piece of your return. You must account for the value of distributions and also the increase or decrease in the value of the fund to get your total return. You can get this information, called a fund's total return, from USATODAY.com's mutual fund pages:
Templeton Funds (TEMFX)
If you want to see when a stock pays a dividend or a mutual fund pays a dividend, you might check with MSN Money. Start by entering a stock or mutual fund's symbol, click the Get Quote button and then click on the "historical" option below Charts on the left-hand side. If this is your first time using the site, you may be prompted to install a harmless browser plug-in first.
After you access the chart, look it over. If the stock paid a dividend or the fund paid a distribution, there will be a small, square with the letter D in it on the chart with the date and size of the payment. For TEMFX that dividend was for $0.315 a share on Dec. 19, 2008.
And for mutual funds and exchange-traded, you can always visit the sponsoring company's website. Vanguard, for instance, provides current and historical distribution information for its entire family of funds.
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