How the dividend calculator and market ticker work
The thin bar at the top of every page shows the latest prices for Brent and WTI crude and for a group of oil and offshore-services companies, with the daily change in percent. This article explains how those numbers are produced and how the dividend calculator uses them.
This is a tool, not investment advice. It does not know your goals, your taxes or your risk tolerance, and it does not recommend any security.
Where the prices come from
Prices are collected automatically from a public market-data source every 15 minutes and are delayed. Oil prices are front-month futures, so the quoted contract changes when it expires. If the data source fails, the site keeps the last good value, and if the data is more than 36 hours old it is hidden rather than shown as current.
What "average monthly dividend" means
For each stock we add up every dividend per share paid in the last 12 months and divide by 12.
| Last 12 months | Amount per share |
|---|---|
| Four quarterly payments of $0.90 | $3.60 |
| Average per month | $0.30 |
Real companies pay quarterly or twice a year, so the monthly figure is a smoothing. It also includes special dividends if there were any, which can overstate what a company pays regularly.
What the calculator does
- Shares = amount invested ÷ current price.
- Monthly income = shares × average monthly dividend × (1 − withholding tax).
- If you turn reinvestment on, each month's net dividends buy more shares at that month's projected price.
- Price growth and dividend growth are your assumptions. They default to 0%.
What it leaves out
- Trading costs, currency conversion and platform fees.
- Taxes other than the single withholding rate you type.
- Changes in a company's dividend policy. Dividends can be cut or suspended.
- Any view on whether a price is cheap or expensive.
Use it to understand how dividend income scales with capital, time and reinvestment, not to decide what to buy.