Coronavirus: Dividend futures – the Nostradamus trade

Dividend futures in Europe indicated weakness well before suspensions of payouts to shareholders began. What explains this apparent predictive ability?

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Most European banks have indicated that they will suspend dividend payments after the Bank of England followed the European Central Bank in discouraging payouts to shareholders while the coronavirus crisis rages.

The list of non-bank companies suspending their dividends is also growing, with Goldman Sachs predicting a 25% fall in payouts by S&P 500 index members this year – a forecast that balances payments already made with a 38% fall for the last nine months of 2020.

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