A U.S.-listed certificate issued by a U.S. bank that represents shares of a foreign company. ADRs trade on NYSE/NASDAQ in U.S. dollars and pay dividends in USD, so American investors can hold international names without a foreign brokerage account or currency conversion. The underlying foreign-stock price still drives the ADR price, so currency moves and foreign withholding taxes still affect your returns. ADRs are tagged with a pink "ADR" badge throughout the app.

The actual underlying share that an ADR certificate represents. The terms ADR and ADS are often used interchangeably — the ADS is the share itself, the ADR is the receipt of ownership.

A DiviDrip game/feature focused on Dividend Achievers — companies that have raised their dividend for 10+ consecutive years. Track which Achievers you own, see your coverage of the full list, and find names you might want to add.

Pronounced "A-F-F-O" (each letter). The REIT world's version of "earnings that can actually pay dividends". Takes FFO (Funds From Operations) and subtracts recurring capital expenses like maintenance, tenant improvements, and leasing commissions — the real-world cash costs of keeping the buildings rentable. AFFO is considered the most reliable dividend-coverage metric for REITs because it reflects the cash actually left over for shareholders after the property is maintained. This is why DiviDrip's Quality Score uses a relaxed 90% payout-ratio cap for REITs (vs the usual 75% for regular stocks) — because the "payout ratio" you see on a REIT is often calculated against GAAP earnings, which dramatically understates a REIT's true earning power once non-cash depreciation is stripped out. The DiviDrip Stock Modal also surfaces an FFO-based "REIT Cash Lens" panel for any flagged REIT (FFO is what we can compute cleanly from yfinance — actual AFFO is usually 5-15% lower because it nets out recurring capex that lives only in the company's supplemental filing). See also: FFO, NOI, REIT Cash Lens, REIT, Why EPS Lies for REITs.

A consensus rating from Wall Street analysts ranging from Strong Buy → Buy → Hold → Sell → Strong Sell. Useful as a quick sentiment check, but always do your own research — analysts are often late to downgrades.

The expected dividend payout over the next 12 months in dollars per share. For most stocks this is the most recent quarterly dividend × 4. The dividend yield you see is calculated as Annualized Dividend ÷ Current Price.

The % per year you expect your dividends to grow — modelled as a compound annual rate. Historical S&P 500 average is roughly 5-6%; Dividend Kings often grow 7-10%+. Shown as the purple slider in the What If? page's Time Machine card, and applied to every position's dividend rate each simulated year.

A dividend frequency where the company pays out one dividend per year. Less common than quarterly because the long gap between checks makes income planning harder. Some European holding companies and a few legacy U.S. names still pay annually. See "Dividend Frequency" for the full list of frequencies (Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually).

A DiviDrip game/feature focused on Dividend Aristocrats — S&P 500 companies that have raised their dividend for 25+ consecutive years. Track your coverage of the list and discover blue-chip names you do not yet own.

How an ETF or fund splits its holdings across stocks, bonds, cash, and other asset types. Surfaced in the Stock Metrics tab for ETFs/CEFs to show what is actually inside the fund.

Average Income-Reliability score across all holdings, scored 1 (safest — big cap Kings/Aristocrats) to 10 (most speculative — high-yield CEFs/BDCs/covered-call ETFs). Drivers include payout ratio sustainability, dividend tier, yield level, leveraged or futures exposure, and fund type (CEF / BDC). Shown as a colored badge (emerald 1-3 Safe · amber 4-6 Moderate · rose 7-10 Risky) on portfolio rows, the stock modal, and as a 4th metric card in the What-If result cards.

A simulation that uses REAL historical Yahoo prices and dividend events to replay what your current portfolio would have done over the last N years. Unlike a forward projection (which assumes a growth rate), a backtest uses actual market data month-by-month so you can see how DCA, DRIP, and your holdings actually performed through real market conditions. Toggle "Reverse Mode 🔮" in the What If? page's Time Machine card to run one.

A type of closed-end investment fund, created by the U.S. Congress in 1980, that provides capital to small- to mid-sized businesses and financially distressed companies. By law, BDCs must invest at least 70% of their assets in private or small public U.S. firms, and by electing regulated-investment-company (RIC) status they avoid corporate-level tax if they distribute at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders — which is why yields of 8-12% are normal (not necessarily yield traps). BDCs trade on major exchanges, letting public investors access private-credit-like returns. Higher-risk than typical equities due to exposure to private/illiquid company debt and frequent use of leverage. Tagged with an indigo "BDC" badge throughout DiviDrip. Examples: Main Street Capital (MAIN), Ares Capital (ARCC), Blue Owl (OBDC), Hercules Capital (HTGC).

A measure of how much a stock moves relative to the broader market (S&P 500 = 1.0). Beta below 0.8 means the stock is less volatile than the market — calmer ride. Beta above 1.2 means bigger swings up and down — more volatile, higher risk/reward. A beta of 1.0 means it tracks the market roughly in line.

A loan you make to a government or company. In return, the borrower agrees to pay you regular interest (called the "coupon") and give you your principal back on a set future date (the "maturity"). Bonds are the most common kind of fixed-income investment and sit lower on the risk ladder than stocks because bondholders get paid before shareholders if the company runs into trouble. The trade-off: bonds usually offer steadier but smaller returns than stocks over the long run.

Bonds are graded by independent credit agencies (Moody's, S&P, Fitch) on a letter scale. The grade tells you how likely the borrower is to actually pay you back. Common bond categories you'll see in fund prospectuses:

• Investment Grade Bonds: Rated BBB- / Baa3 or higher. Issued by financially strong governments and blue-chip companies. Lower yields, lower default risk. Considered "safe enough for pension funds" by regulators.
• AAA Bonds: The single highest credit rating possible. Reserved for the most rock-solid borrowers (a handful of governments and a few mega-cap corporations). Lowest yields, lowest default risk historically. AAA-rated CLO tranches have, to date, never defaulted.
• BB+ Bonds: The top notch of the "below investment grade" band — also called High-Yield or Junk bonds. Higher yields to compensate for higher default risk. BB+ is the highest junk rating, just one step below investment grade. Funds like JBBB target this band specifically.
• High-Yield (Junk) Bonds: Anything rated BB+ or below. Higher coupons, but real default risk in a recession. Often issued by smaller or more leveraged companies.
• Perpetual Bonds: Bonds with NO maturity date — they pay coupons forever (or until the issuer chooses to call them). Common with banks (used to satisfy regulatory capital rules) and some sovereign issuers. Higher yields because your principal may never come back; price-sensitive to interest rates.
• Government / Treasury Bonds: Issued by sovereign governments. U.S. Treasuries are the global benchmark for "risk-free" debt. Typically lower yields, used as portfolio ballast.
• Municipal Bonds: Issued by U.S. states, counties, and cities. Interest is usually exempt from federal (and sometimes state) income tax — popular in taxable brokerage accounts.
• Corporate Bonds: Issued by companies. Span the full quality range from AAA to deep junk. The bulk of most bond ETFs.

See also: CLO (Collateralized Loan Obligation), Securities, Tranches, Hedge (Hedging).

The accounting value of a company's assets minus its liabilities, divided by shares outstanding. Roughly: what the company would be worth if it shut down today and sold everything. Compared to the share price using the Price/Book ratio.

A standard non-retirement investment account. You can deposit and withdraw freely with no age restrictions, but you owe taxes every year on dividends received and capital gains realized. Less tax-efficient than IRAs, but gives total flexibility.

The smoothed annualized rate of growth between two points in time, accounting for compounding. Example: a dividend that grew from $1.00 to $1.61 over 5 years had a 5-year CAGR of about 10%. Used in DiviDrip to summarize dividend, EPS, and revenue growth over multi-year periods.

A publicly-traded investment fund that raises a fixed pool of capital through an IPO and then trades on a stock exchange like a regular stock. Unlike open-end mutual funds and ETFs, the share count is fixed — meaning the fund's market price can trade at a premium or (usually) discount to NAV based on supply and demand. CEFs can use leverage (typically up to 30-40% of assets) to amplify income and total return, hold less-liquid assets that ETFs can't easily wrap, and historically pay strong distributions — often monthly with 6-12% yields. Many distribute "Return of Capital" (ROC) instead of, or alongside, ordinary income; check the fund's Section 19a notice to understand the source of payouts. Tagged with a teal "CEF" badge throughout DiviDrip. Examples: PIMCO Dynamic Income (PDI), Reaves Utility Income (UTG), Gabelli Equity Trust (GAB), Nuveen AMT-Free Quality Muni (NEA), BlackRock Science & Technology (BST).

A bundle of corporate loans — usually senior, secured, below-investment-grade (junk-rated) loans to mid- and large-cap companies — packaged together and sliced into tranches that pay investors at different priority levels. Think of a CLO as a layer cake: the bottom layer (equity tranche) absorbs losses first but earns the highest return when things go well; the top layer (AAA tranche) gets paid first and is therefore the safest. CLO managers actively buy and sell loans inside the pool to keep credit quality healthy and react to defaults. Banks like CLOs because they let them offload loan risk and free up capital; income investors like them because the AAA tranches have historically delivered higher yields than similarly-rated corporate bonds with comparable safety — no AAA-rated CLO tranche has ever defaulted (per Janus Henderson and BlackRock). The flip side: CLOs are sensitive to economic downturns, corporate-default cycles, and floating interest rates. Fund examples: JAAA (AAA-only CLO ETF), JBBB (BBB-and-up CLO ETF), AAA, ICLO. See also: Bonds, Securities, Tranches.

In the context of dual-class Brazilian ADRs (e.g., BBDO), "ON" stands for "Ordinárias" — common shares that carry voting rights at shareholder meetings and 100% tag-along rights, but receive a slightly lower base dividend than preferred shares.

A self-rated number you attach to a journal entry that asks "how confident am I in this thesis right now?" One = "I'm guessing." Ten = "I would bet meaningfully on this." Conviction is most useful written down BEFORE the outcome is known, then reviewed later. Most investors find their high-conviction calls don't actually outperform their low-conviction ones — see the Conviction vs Outcome chart on the Journal page.

A scatter plot on the Journal page that pairs every journal entry that has BOTH a conviction (1–10) AND a price-anchored ticker against that ticker\'s % return between when the entry was written and today. X-axis = conviction, Y-axis = return-since-entry. The chart unlocks once you have 20 qualifying entries.

Above the chart we surface a Pearson correlation (r) — the single number that summarises whether high-conviction calls are actually outperforming. r ≈ 0 means your conviction isn\'t predictive (the most common case). r > +0.4 = strong evidence your gut is calibrated. r < −0.4 = your bold calls are underperforming, which is worth investigating before sizing up further.

What you paid for shares, including any commissions or fees. Critical for calculating capital gains/losses when you sell, and for computing Yield on Cost (YoC). DiviDrip tracks cost basis automatically as you log positions.

CPI is the U.S. government's monthly measure of how much prices are changing for everyday stuff — groceries, rent, gas, healthcare, etc. When you hear "inflation is running at 3%", that 3% number is from the CPI report. "CPI protection" means an investment whose income or value tends to rise alongside CPI, so your real spending power doesn't shrink during inflation. Real estate is a classic example: landlords can raise rents during inflation, and property values typically follow inflation upward, which is why REITs are often described as having built-in CPI protection. Other CPI-protected vehicles include Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), commodity-linked stocks, and businesses with strong pricing power. See also: Inflation Hedge, REIT.

A liquidity check: Current Assets ÷ Current Liabilities. Above 1.5 generally means the company can comfortably cover its short-term bills. Below 1.0 is a yellow flag — they may struggle with near-term obligations.

Total debt divided by shareholder equity. Below 50% = financially conservative; 50–100% = moderate leverage; above 100% means the company has more debt than equity, which is riskier but normal in capital-intensive industries (utilities, telecom, REITs).

Buying a fixed dollar amount on a regular schedule (usually monthly) regardless of share price. Reduces timing risk — when prices are low your money buys more shares; when prices are high it buys fewer. Over long periods DCA smooths out entry-point volatility versus trying to time the market with lump-sum buys. In the What If? simulator, the DCA card lets you model a monthly $ amount spread EACH across selected tickers or SPLIT among them, then projects the compounding effect of those extra shares over the Time Machine horizon.

The gap in total return between your portfolio and a benchmark (SCHD or VYM) over the same window. Shown as "percentage points" (pp). Example: if your portfolio returned 42% and SCHD returned 37% over the same 5 years, your delta vs SCHD is +5pp — you beat SCHD by 5 percentage points. Positive delta = beating the benchmark (green). Negative delta = trailing the benchmark (rose). Under 1pp is basically tied; 1–3pp is slight; 3–7pp is solid; 7–15pp is a clear win or painful miss; 15pp+ is a blowout in either direction.

The day a company's board officially announces an upcoming dividend payment, including the amount, ex-dividend date, record date, and pay date.

Financial contracts whose value is "derived" from the price of something else — a stock, a bond, an index, a commodity, an interest rate, or a currency. The contract itself is just an agreement; the underlying asset is what actually moves the price. The four main types are options (right but not obligation to buy/sell at a set price), futures (binding agreement to buy/sell at a set future date and price), swaps (exchange one stream of payments for another, like fixed interest for floating), and forwards (private futures-like agreements). Funds use derivatives for two very different reasons: speculation (amplifying returns with leverage — the source of the danger) and hedging (offsetting an existing risk — the source of the safety). When a fund prospectus says "derivatives are used only to hedge", as JBBB does, it means the fund is buying protection rather than placing bets. See also: Hedge, Leveraged ETF, Futures-Based Fund.

A cash (or sometimes stock) payment that a company sends to shareholders out of its profits. The whole reason this app exists. Dividends can be raised, held flat, or cut — DiviDrip helps you spot the warning signs early.

When a company reduces its dividend payout vs the prior payment. Usually a major red flag — and a falling stock price often follows the announcement. Many cuts are telegraphed by warning signs the app surfaces: payout ratio above 100%, falling earnings, rising debt. DiviDrip flags a recent cut with a rose-coloured "CUT -X.X%" badge next to the ticker (visible on the Stock Modal, Portfolio rows, Watchlist, Screener, and the main stock table). The badge appears whenever the LAST declared dividend dropped 10% or more vs the prior payment. Only the MOST RECENT change is shown — if a stock cuts then later raises, the cut badge is replaced by a raise badge automatically. Hover the badge to see the exact $ amounts of the last and prior payments.

How often a stock pays a dividend. The five frequencies you'll see in DiviDrip: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly (the most common for U.S. stocks), Semi-Annually (typical for European stocks), and Annually. Monthly payers are popular with retirees because the income matches monthly bills; weekly payers are very rare and usually leveraged options-income ETFs.

When a company increases its dividend payout vs the prior payment. A positive signal for income growth — companies that consistently raise tend to outperform those that don't over long periods (Dividend Aristocrats and Kings are the classic examples). DiviDrip flags a recent raise with an emerald-coloured "+X.X% RAISE" badge next to the ticker (visible on the Stock Modal, Portfolio rows, Watchlist, Screener, and the main stock table). The badge appears whenever the LAST declared dividend rose 10% or more vs the prior payment. Only the MOST RECENT change is shown — a fresh raise overwrites a previous cut or raise badge automatically. Hover the badge to see the exact $ amounts of the last and prior payments.

A bonus visual on top of the regular Dividend Raise badge. When a King (50+ years), Aristocrat (25+ years), or Achiever (10+ years) is the one declaring the raise, the green "+X.X% RAISE" pill swaps to an amber pill with a flame icon and a "Streak!" suffix — celebrating that the multi-decade raise streak is still alive after the latest hike. Why it matters: the longer the streak, the more meaningful each new raise is. A 50-year King raising again is a much stronger signal than a first-year payer raising — it tells you the board still has the discipline (and the cash flow) to extend an unbroken record that very few companies in the world maintain. The flame appears on the Stock Modal, Portfolio rows, Watchlist, Screener, and the main stock table — anywhere the standard raise badge shows up. It only appears for raises (not cuts) and only for the three highest dividend tiers; everything else uses the standard emerald raise pill.

Shorthand for the Dividend Triangle — see "Dividend Triangle" for the full definition. When you hear someone on DiviDrip ask "what does the Triangle say?" they're asking about the 3-axis radar of Revenue, EPS, and Dividend 5-year CAGRs. See: Dividend Triangle, Triangle Score, Why this score?, Dividend Trap.

A 3-axis radar chart that compares the 5-year compound growth rates of three numbers that have to move in the same direction for a dividend to actually be sustainable: Revenue (top-line sales), EPS (diluted earnings per share), and the Dividend itself. Open the Triangle tab on any stock modal — or visit /triangle/TICKER directly to share the view — and the chart fills emerald when all three legs are healthy, amber when the picture is mixed, and rose when the dividend is racing ahead of the fundamentals underneath it. Window is adaptive: if a company only has 3 years of public history, the chart says "n=3yr CAGR" instead of blanking out.

A single 0–100 number summarizing the Dividend Triangle. Each leg (Revenue, EPS, Dividend CAGR) is normalized to a 0–100 axis (−5% CAGR → 0, 0% → 40, +15% → 100, linear between), and the Triangle Score is the average of whatever legs have valid data. 75+ = strong triangle, 60–74 = healthy, 45–59 = mixed signals, 30–44 = weak fundamentals, below 30 = high risk of cut. Read it alongside the Dividend Quality Score: Quality answers "how attractive is the payout?" and Triangle answers "are the underlying growth trends actually pointing in the right direction?". After you visit a stock's Triangle tab once, the score caches for 24 hours and surfaces as a small ▲ chip directly on that stock's row in the Screener and Watchlist tables — emerald for 70+, sky for 50-69, amber for 35-49, rose with a warning icon for under 35 or trap-flagged. Click the chip to jump straight to the full radar.

A collapsible panel of 1–3 plain-English bullets that explain exactly why a stock got the score it did, generated from the cached fundamentals at score-compute time (no extra fetches, no AI). Each bullet is one of four tones — emerald positive (e.g. "Revenue is compounding 3× faster than the dividend — plenty of room for future hikes"), amber caution ("EPS is lagging the dividend by 5 percentage points — payout ratio will creep up"), rose negative ("Payout ratio is 142% — paying out more than the company earns"), or sky info ("This is an ETF, the Triangle reflects only the fund's distribution growth"). Rules are evaluated in priority order and capped at 3 entries so the panel stays scannable. The narrative fires from cached fields like Payout Ratio, ROIC, FCF Margin, Debt/Equity, Revenue Stability, and ROE — see those glossary entries for what each one actually measures. Two surfaces use this engine: (1) the **Triangle pages** show a Triangle-tuned narrative below the score hero, and (2) the **Stock Modal → Stock Metrics tab** opens with a Quality-Score-tuned narrative at the top ("Quality Score is 55 (Healthy) because: payout 65% comfortable, ROIC 39% strong, D/E 1.40 manageable, 64+ yr streak"). Both panels are open by default but collapse with one click.

A rolling 12-month window ending at the most recent quarter, used when a stock doesn't have enough multi-year history for a true 5-year CAGR. Example: a company that IPO'd 18 months ago has plenty of quarterly data but no 5-year history — DiviDrip's Triangle Score will fall back to the TTM growth rate from the cached FinImpulse / Yahoo fundamentals (the same number you see as "EPS Growth (CAGR) 11.75%" on the Stock Metrics tab) and tag the leg with an "n=1yr CAGR · TTM" footnote so you know the window is short. TTM is a one-year snapshot — it's informative but more volatile than a 5-year CAGR, especially for cyclical businesses. Read it alongside the Quality Score, which weights Longevity (King 50+ years, Aristocrat 25+, Achiever 10+) so a TTM-only ticker can't score above Healthy on the Triangle without other signals supporting it.

A stock whose dividend keeps going up while the business behind it is not. DiviDrip flags a Dividend Trap on the Triangle tab whenever (a) the dividend is growing AND earnings are shrinking, (b) the dividend is growing AND revenue is shrinking with flat EPS, or (c) the dividend is growing more than twice as fast as EPS (plus a small buffer). When the trap flag fires the radar fill turns rose and a warning banner explains which leg is mismatched. Classic trap signature: a high-yield stock with a multi-year dividend streak whose earnings are declining year over year — eventually the payout ratio hits 100% and the dividend gets cut.

The CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of a stock's dividend over a chosen period (1, 3, 5, or 10 years). A 5-year DGR of 7% means the dividend has grown 7% per year on average — a strong indicator of a healthy, well-managed company.

The dollar difference between a stock's forward dividend rate (the next annualised dividend the company has signalled it will pay) and its trailing 12-month dividend rate (what it actually paid over the prior year). Both are USD-normalised so cross-market comparisons work. A POSITIVE delta means the company's most recent declared rate is higher than what it actually paid over the last 12 months — a leading indicator of a fresh dividend hike. A NEGATIVE delta is the opposite — a leading indicator of a cut, often appearing in the data BEFORE the formal cut announcement is widely reported. DiviDrip surfaces this two ways: (1) the Quality Score awards +3 for hikes ≥5% (forward/trailing) or deducts 5 for cuts ≤−10%; (2) the Stock Modal's Dividend Info tab shows a green "Recent Hike +X%" or red "Recent Cut −Y%" banner whenever the change is at least 2% in either direction. Example: KO trailing $1.84/yr, forward $1.94/yr → delta +$0.10 (+5.4%) — bullish dividend momentum.

A 0–100 composite score DiviDrip computes for every dividend stock from cached fundamentals — no third-party API. Five pillars: Safety (30 pts, payout ratio with REIT-aware cap), Yield (25 pts, sweet-spot 3–7% rewarded, traps >12% zeroed), Growth (20 pts, 5-year dividend CAGR), Longevity (25 pts, King 25 / Aristocrat 20 / Achiever 10), and Fundamentals (up to +13 pts, FinImpulse-derived: +5 for ROE ≥15%, +5 for stable revenue (revenue stability ≤0.05), +3 for a recent dividend hike of ≥5% forward vs trailing). Structural penalties: −15 leveraged ETF, −5 CEF, −5 Debt/Equity >2.0, −5 recent dividend cut (forward ≤−10% vs trailing). Bands: 85+ Elite (A+), 70+ Strong (A), 55+ Healthy (B), 40+ Average (C), 25+ Weak (D), under 25 Risky (F). Read it ALONGSIDE the Income Risk Score — quality answers "how attractive is this dividend profile?" while risk answers "how shaky is this paycheck?". Click any quality badge to open the full Quality Breakdown popover with bar charts, fundamental bonuses, and structural penalties listed individually; on Watchlist rows you also get a Compare Quality button to stack up to 6 tickers side-by-side.

DiviDrip's shorthand for how long a stock has consecutively raised its dividend. Kings = 50+ years (the most elite), Aristocrats = 25+ years, Achievers = 10+ years. Each tier has its own Challenge page where you can track which names you own.

Annualized dividend ÷ current share price, expressed as a percentage. A stock paying $4 per share annually at a $100 price has a 4% yield. Yield rises automatically when the price falls — which is why a sky-high yield can be a warning sign rather than a good deal (see Yield Trap).

Automatically reinvesting your dividends back into more shares of the same stock instead of taking the cash. Over decades this compounding effect dramatically increases your share count and total income. Most U.S. brokerages offer DRIP for free, often even fractional shares. DiviDrip's DRIP Calculator models this for you.

A built-in DiviDrip tool that projects how a position will grow over time when dividends are reinvested. Plug in shares + assumed dividend growth + price growth, and it shows year-by-year share count, dividend income, and account value.

A DiviDrip view (logged-in users) that shows every upcoming ex-dividend and payment date for stocks in your watchlist and portfolio, laid out month-by-month so you can plan around the income stream.

A 0–100 score DiviDrip computes for each opted-in community member based on the spread of their portfolio across BOTH sectors AND asset types. Higher = more diversified. Uses an inverted Herfindahl-Hirschman index — a single sector or asset type = 0; perfectly even spread = 100. Weighted 60% sector / 40% type. Yield is NEVER part of the score — we deliberately do not reward yield chasing. Drives the DiviDrip Community Leaderboard.

Total company profit divided by shares outstanding. The headline number every quarter. EPS Growth (also called CAGR over multiple years) is one of the strongest predictors of long-term dividend growth.

Compound Annual Growth Rate of Earnings Per Share — usually measured over 3 or 5 years. Example: a stock that went from $2.00 EPS five years ago to $3.50 today has an EPS CAGR of about 11.8% per year. EPS Growth is the cleanest signal that a company can KEEP raising its dividend over time — you cannot pay rising dividends out of falling earnings forever. Above 8%/yr is excellent (think tech, healthcare leaders); 4–8% is solid (consumer staples, mature industrials); 0–4% is slow but acceptable for high-payout names like utilities; negative means earnings are shrinking and the dividend is at risk. Surfaced in the Stock Modal's Profitability section once a Finimpulse Full Pull has populated the field.

A sky-blue "Ex-div in Xd" / "Ex-div today" / "Ex-div tomorrow" chip that fires on Watchlist rows when the stock's next ex-dividend date is within the next 7 days. Buy BEFORE the ex-div date to qualify for the upcoming dividend. The chip also appears in the Watchlist Snapshot card at the top of the page so you can see all your soon-paying tickers at a glance. See "Ex-Dividend Date" for the underlying mechanic.

A more complete valuation than market cap: market cap + total debt − cash on hand. Represents what it would cost to buy the entire company outright. Used in metrics like EV/EBITDA.

The annual fee an ETF or mutual fund charges, expressed as a percentage of assets — quietly subtracted from the fund's daily NAV, so you never see a bill but the cost is very real over time. A 0.06% expense ratio (like SCHD) means $6/year per $10,000 invested; a 0.68% ratio (like IWMI) means $68/year per $10,000. Index ETFs typically sit between 0.03% and 0.20%; actively-managed and options-overlay funds (JEPI, JEPQ, covered-call ETFs, derivative-income funds) run 0.30%–0.95%; leveraged or futures-based funds can exceed 1%. Lower is almost always better for buy-and-hold investors because the fee compounds against you — a 0.6% difference over 30 years can eat ~15–20% of your final balance. Surfaced in the Stock Modal's Stock Metrics → Fund Profile section for every ETF we have data on.

A framework for judging companies on three non-financial dimensions: Environmental (carbon emissions, water and energy use, pollution, climate-change exposure), Social (employee treatment, workplace safety, community impact, product safety, supply-chain ethics), and Governance (board independence, executive pay, shareholder rights, accounting transparency, anti-corruption practices). ESG funds use this framework to either screen OUT companies that fail certain thresholds (the most common approach) or actively tilt TOWARD companies with strong ESG profiles. When a fund like JLQD says holdings are sold once they "no longer meet the fund's ESG and/or sustainable criteria", it means a company crossed a line on one of these three dimensions — pollution incident, accounting scandal, governance scandal, etc. — and the fund's rules force divestment. ESG ratings are not standardized: different agencies (MSCI, Sustainalytics, S&P) can give the same company very different scores depending on which factors they weight.

The cutoff day to qualify for the next dividend. If you own the stock at market open on the ex-div date, you get the dividend. If you buy on or after the ex-div date, you do not — the previous owner does. The stock price typically drops by roughly the dividend amount on this day.

A Stock Screener dropdown that surfaces dividend-payers whose NEXT ex-dividend date falls within a chosen forward window. Five cumulative options: Within 7 days (~440 names — drop everything if you want this paycheck), Within 15 days (~770 names — buy this fortnight), Within 30 days (~1,370 names — covers monthlies + most early-cycle quarterlies), Within 60 days (~3,100 names — broader planning view), Within 95 days (~3,340 names — covers a full quarterly cycle so EVERY quarterly + monthly + weekly stock shows up at least once, with a 5-day buffer). Pair with the Yield, Quality, and Sector filters to find quality income that pays soon. Stock counts vary slightly day-to-day as ex-div dates roll past.

The actual cash a company generates after paying for its operations and capital investments. Unlike "earnings" (which involves accounting choices), free cash flow is hard to fake and is the truest measure of a dividend's sustainability. If FCF comfortably covers the dividend, the dividend is safe.

Free Cash Flow ÷ Revenue, as a percentage. Higher is better. Above 15% is excellent (think software, payments). Below 5% is thin and dividend-vulnerable in a downturn. Negative means the company is burning cash.

Pronounced "F-F-O" (each letter). The REIT industry's standard earnings measure, built to undo a quirk in GAAP accounting: GAAP forces REITs to subtract depreciation on their buildings every year, even though real-world property values usually rise. FFO "adds back" that non-cash depreciation to net income, plus removes one-time gains/losses on property sales — giving a cleaner picture of the recurring cash earnings the REIT generates. Almost every REIT reports FFO alongside GAAP net income; when a REIT says its "payout ratio is 75% of FFO", that is the number to trust, not payout-of-GAAP-earnings (which for a REIT can easily look like 200%+ and trigger false alarms). DiviDrip's REIT Cash Lens panel on the Stock Modal shows your FFO per share, the FFO payout ratio, and a verdict (Very Safe < 70% / Sweet Spot 70-85% / Stretched 85-100% / Risky > 100%) so you can sanity-check a REIT's dividend coverage at a glance. See also: AFFO (even better), GAAP, NOI, REIT Cash Lens, REIT.

The number of a company's shares that are actually available for the public to trade — total shares minus those held by insiders, founders, and large institutional locks. Low float can mean wild price swings on small volume.

Price-to-Earnings ratio based on next year's expected earnings rather than the past year's actual earnings. Useful when a company is rapidly growing or recovering, since trailing P/E may overstate how "expensive" the stock really is.

Same as Annualized Dividend — the expected total dividend per share over the next 12 months. Compare against the Trailing Annual Dividend Rate to spot recent dividend hikes (forward > trailing) or cuts (forward < trailing) — see "Dividend Policy Delta".

The fifth pillar of the Dividend Quality Score (worth up to +13 pts net). Unlike the four core pillars (Safety / Yield / Growth / Longevity), this one is purely additive — it can boost a score but only fires when the underlying FinImpulse-derived field is on file. The five components: (1) Stable Revenue (+5) when revenue stability ≤ 0.05 (low coefficient of variation in 5-yr revenue), (2) Strong ROE (+5) when Return on Equity ≥ 15%, (3) Recent Hike (+3) when forward dividend is ≥5% above trailing 12-month rate, (4) High Debt (−5) when Debt/Equity > 2.0, (5) Recent Cut (−5) when forward dividend is ≤−10% vs trailing. The Stock Modal Quality Breakdown popover lists every firing factor with its raw value so you can see exactly what pushed the score up or down. See also: ROE, Revenue Stability, Debt-to-Equity, Dividend Policy Delta.

A pooled investment vehicle — many investors' money is bundled together so a professional manager (or an automated index rule set) can buy a basket of dozens or hundreds of holdings on everyone's behalf. You buy shares of the fund, the fund owns the actual stocks/bonds/CLOs/etc. The most common types you'll see in DiviDrip: ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds — trade like stocks all day at the market price; the bulk of dividend products like SCHD, JEPI, JAAA), Mutual Funds (priced once a day at NAV; older format, usually held inside 401(k)s), CEFs (Closed-End Funds — fixed share count that trades at a premium or discount to NAV — see CEF entry), BDCs (Business Development Companies — see BDC entry), and REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts — technically a fund-like structure for real estate — see REIT entry). Funds give you instant diversification and (for index funds) low fees, in exchange for the management fee (the "expense ratio"). See also: BDC, CEF, REIT, ETF concepts in Stock Screener.

An ETF that gets its exposure to commodities, currencies, or volatility through futures contracts rather than owning the underlying assets. Comes with margin/leverage risk, "roll cost" decay (futures contracts must be replaced as they expire), and returns can drift away from the underlying over time. Tagged with an amber "Futures" badge in DiviDrip.

Pronounced "gap". The standard bookkeeping rulebook that every U.S. public company must follow when reporting earnings, assets, and liabilities to the SEC. When you see "net income", "EPS" (earnings per share), or "payout ratio" on a regular stock, those numbers are GAAP-based. The strength of GAAP is that it makes companies comparable — same rules across every industry. The weakness is that some industries don't fit neatly into GAAP's one-size-fits-all mold. REITs are the classic example: GAAP forces them to subtract depreciation on their real estate every year, which is a non-cash accounting charge that often dramatically understates how much money a REIT is actually making. That is why the REIT industry reports FFO and AFFO alongside GAAP — those custom metrics add the depreciation back to show the real cash earnings available for dividends. See also: AFFO, FFO, Payout Ratio, REIT.

Shorthand for the dollar change in value of an investment compared to what you paid for it: G/L = Current Value − Cost Basis. A positive G/L means you\'re ahead, negative means you\'re behind. DiviDrip surfaces G/L in three flavors:

Unrealized G/L — the gain or loss exists on paper because the stock price moved, but you haven\'t sold yet. Doesn\'t count for taxes (yet). This is what you see on the Tax Lot Optimizer page and in the Portfolio summary. Until you sell, the number can swing freely with the market.

Realized G/L — the gain or loss locked in when you actually sold. Now it counts for taxes (capital-gains rules apply, with long-term vs short-term treatment based on how long you held the lot before selling). Once realized, the number doesn\'t change.

G/L % — the same gain or loss expressed as a percentage of cost basis: G/L % = (Current Value − Cost Basis) / Cost Basis × 100. Lets you compare positions of different sizes — a $500 gain on a $1,000 buy (+50%) is a much bigger win than a $500 gain on a $50,000 buy (+1%) even though the dollar amounts are the same. DiviDrip color-codes G/L green when positive and rose-red when negative.

Note: G/L on a dividend stock with DRIP on usually understates total return because cash dividends received and reinvested don\'t change cost basis or current value the way price moves do. Total return (G/L + cash dividends taken + DRIP-reinvested dividends) is the more complete picture — see the Time Machine bar on every watchlist row for a 1-year total-return view that includes DRIP.

A company expected to grow earnings significantly faster than the market average. Growth stocks usually pay no or small dividends because they reinvest profits into expanding the business. Capital appreciation is the goal, not income.

Buying an investment specifically designed to offset losses on something else you own — financial insurance, basically. The whole point is to reduce risk, not to make money. Classic examples: a CLO fund buys interest-rate swaps so that if rates spike and bond prices crash, the swap payoff cancels out the bond losses; an airline buys oil futures so that if jet fuel prices double, the futures profit covers the higher fuel bill; a U.S. investor in European stocks buys currency forwards so that if the euro tanks, the FX hedge protects their dollar-denominated returns. When a fund prospectus says derivatives are used "only to hedge", as JBBB does, it means the fund is buying protection against existing risks in its portfolio — not making leveraged bets. Compare with speculation, where the same instruments are used for amplified returns. See also: Derivatives, Inflation Hedge.

See "Backtest (Reverse Mode)" — a What If? simulator mode that replays real Yahoo monthly prices + dividends over the last N years, letting you validate DCA/DRIP against real market history instead of assumed growth rates.

The list of stocks, bonds, or other assets that an ETF or mutual fund actually owns. The "Top 10 Holdings" view is usually the most useful — those are the names driving most of the fund's performance. DiviDrip surfaces holdings data in the Stock Metrics tab for ETFs and CEFs.

The year-by-year line chart on the What If? page that plots dividend income for both Now (your current portfolio as-is) and What If? (with your scenario applied) over the Time Machine horizon. Shows how changes + price/growth sliders diverge the two income paths over time.

See "Avg Risk (Income Reliability Score)" — DiviDrip's 1-to-10 rating of how dependable a stock's dividend is, based on payout ratio, dividend tier, yield level, and risk flags (leveraged, futures, BDC, CEF, etc.). 1-3 = Safe (emerald), 4-6 = Moderate (amber), 7-10 = Risky (rose).

An investment that tends to hold or grow its real value (purchasing power) when inflation rises. The idea: if a $20 dinner becomes $24 next year, an inflation hedge ideally rises by a similar amount so you're not poorer in real terms. Classic inflation hedges include real estate (rents and property values typically rise with prices), commodities like gold and oil, TIPS bonds (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities), and stocks of companies with strong "pricing power" (think Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble — they can pass cost increases on to customers). REITs are often cited as a built-in inflation hedge because landlords can raise rents during inflation and property values track upward over time. No hedge is perfect — high inflation usually hurts most stocks short-term — but inflation-hedged assets tend to recover faster and protect long-term real returns better than cash or fixed-rate bonds. See also: CPI / CPI Protection, REIT.

Percent of shares held by company executives, founders, and board members. High insider ownership is generally a positive — management has skin in the game and is incentivized to make decisions that benefit shareholders.

Percent of shares held by professional money managers (mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies). Very high institutional ownership can mean stability, but also amplified moves when those big players reposition.

Individual Retirement Account where contributions are tax-deductible today and growth is tax-deferred — you pay ordinary income tax only when you withdraw in retirement (after age 59½). DRIP works great inside a Traditional IRA because no taxes are owed on reinvested dividends until withdrawal.

DiviDrip\'s built-in investing journal. Every entry captures what you were thinking at a specific moment — anchored to a ticker, a buy/sell, or just a free-form thought. The whole point: investors who write down their thesis BEFORE outcomes are known are clearer-headed than those who don\'t. Reading old entries six months later is one of the highest-ROI activities in investing.

Entry types — Thesis on Add (auto-suggested when you buy), Thesis on Sell (auto-suggested when you sell), Dividend-Cut Note (auto-suggested when one of your holdings cuts its dividend), Ex-Div Week (observations during ex-div week), Free Note (anything on your mind), Periodic Review (weekly / monthly self-review with guided prompts), JNL Starter (auto-drafted from Robinhood JNL rows when you import a CSV).

Per-entry fields — title, body (any length), optional emotion tag (Disciplined / Patient / Confident / Curious / FOMO / Panic / Regret), conviction slider 1–10 (charts against actual outcomes via the Conviction vs Outcome chart once you have 20+ entries), free-form tags (e.g. #core-position #yield-trap) with a curated picker so the dropdown grows with your habits. Entries linked to a trade also store a context snapshot — price, cost basis, dividend yield at the moment — so re-reading the entry later still shows the world as it was when you wrote it.

Where it lives — the standalone /journal page (full timeline, search, ticker / type / tag filters, weekly & monthly review prompts, Conviction vs Outcome chart) plus a per-stock Journal tab inside every Stock Modal so you can scan only that ticker\'s entries while researching it again. Click any tag chip to land on a dedicated /journal/tag/{tag} page listing every entry on that label.

Privacy & sharing — your journal is strictly login-gated. No public read URL exists. Each entry has a Share to X button that opens an X (Twitter) compose window pre-populated with a body excerpt + your tags as hashtags + #DiviDrip — manual broadcasting if you want, otherwise totally private.

Inspired by Tradervue / TraderSync / Edgewonk — three industry-leading trading-journal tools — but tilted to dividend investors\' needs (thesis on add/trim, dividend-cut response, ex-div observations) rather than day-trader metrics. Journals are NOT wiped by Reset Portfolio — they\'re reflective records, valid even after the position is gone.

A tax form issued by partnerships (MLPs and many older futures-based commodity ETFs) instead of a 1099. K-1s arrive late in tax season, can complicate your return, and may require an extension. Modern dividend ETFs avoid them; look for "K-1 Free" funds (e.g., BCI, PDBC) when you want commodity exposure.

A DiviDrip game/feature focused on Dividend Kings — companies that have raised their dividend for 50+ consecutive years. The most elite tier of dividend stocks. Track your coverage and find names to add.

A public ranking of community members by their Diversification Score (sector + asset-type spread). DiviDrip deliberately does NOT rank members by yield, total return, or net worth — those metrics reward yield chasing and risk taking, the opposite of what a dividend-growth community should celebrate. Opt-in only.

An ETF designed to deliver 2× or 3× the daily return of an underlying index or stock. Daily resets cause "decay" over time — leveraged ETFs almost always underperform their expected multiple over weeks, months, and especially years. Built for short-term trading, not long-term dividend investing. Tagged with a red "Leveraged" badge in DiviDrip.

Buying a stock for meaningfully less than your conservative estimate of its intrinsic value, so unforeseen problems do not turn into losses. Coined by Benjamin Graham, popularized by Warren Buffett. The bigger the margin of safety, the more room for being wrong about the future.

Total value of all the company's shares = share price × shares outstanding. DiviDrip groups stocks into Mega ($200B+), Large ($10B–$200B), Mid ($2B–$10B), Small ($300M–$2B), and Micro (under $300M).

A passive-income achievement badge earned by DiviDrip Community members. Eight tiers, from "Coffee Payer" ($100/yr projected dividend income) all the way up to "Lifestyle Fund" ($30,000/yr). Computed nightly from your real portfolio × dividend data — no manual claiming. Designed to shift focus away from daily price noise toward the growing paycheck.

A publicly traded partnership, usually in energy infrastructure (pipelines, storage). MLPs offer high yields but issue Schedule K-1 tax forms instead of 1099s, which can complicate taxes and disqualify them from many retirement accounts.

A moat is a company's sustainable competitive advantage that protects its market share and long-term profits from competitors. Popularized by Warren Buffett, the term uses the metaphor of a medieval castle: the business is the "castle," and the moat is the barrier that makes it difficult for "marauding" rivals to enter the market and steal profits.

A dividend frequency where the company pays out 12 dividends per year — one every month. Popular with retirees because the income matches monthly bills like rent, mortgage, and utilities. Realty Income (O) trademarked the slogan "The Monthly Dividend Company"; other examples include STAG Industrial, Main Street Capital, and most BDCs and CEFs. See "Dividend Frequency" for the full list (Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually).

A DiviDrip feature where you set a target monthly dividend income (e.g., $2,000/mo) and the app tracks how close your portfolio is to hitting it. Useful for visualizing FIRE/retirement timelines.

Annual dividend income ÷ 12 — a quick "if nothing changes, this is what my portfolio pays me per month" estimate. Shown on both Now and What-If result cards in the simulator, and on the portfolio Paycheck Strip. Different from actual monthly payments (which depend on each stock's payment frequency); run-rate smooths everything into an even monthly figure.

A DiviDrip view (logged-in users) that lists every position you own — share count, cost basis, current value, gain/loss, dividend income, yield, and Yield on Cost. Backed by your transaction log.

A read-only public link of your portfolio (anonymized — no email or name shown unless you choose to). Useful for showing off coverage on social media or sharing strategy with friends without revealing your account.

For ETFs and CEFs: the per-share value of everything the fund holds, minus debts. Regular ETFs trade very close to NAV thanks to arbitrage; CEFs can trade at a premium or discount to NAV.

A violet "Near 52w low" chip that fires on Watchlist rows when the stock's current price is within 5% of its 52-week low (the lowest price the stock has traded at over the past year). Often a possible buying opportunity for quality dividend names that have been temporarily punished by the market — but always confirm fundamentals haven't deteriorated before adding (the price could be falling for a real reason: earnings miss, dividend cut announcement, sector-wide selloff). Pairs well with the Quality Score (a high-quality stock near its 52-week low is the textbook setup for "buy good companies on sale"). Watchlist view only.

Net Income ÷ Revenue, expressed as a percentage. The bottom-line profitability number. Above 15% is excellent; below 5% is thin and risky for dividend sustainability.

Pronounced "N-O-I" (each letter). The pure operating-profit number for a real-estate property — rent collected minus operating expenses (property management, taxes, insurance, repairs). NOI is calculated BEFORE depreciation, interest expense, and corporate overhead, so it isolates how productive the buildings themselves are. The most meaningful REIT growth metric is "Same-Property NOI Growth" or "Same-Store NOI" — what the buildings the REIT already owned last year are doing this year (filters out the boost from buying new properties). A good REIT typically grows same-property NOI 2-5% per year; standout sectors like industrial, data centers, and self-storage have run 6-10%. NOI is a "leading" indicator for FFO and AFFO — when same-property NOI is accelerating, dividend growth usually follows within a year or two. NOI lives in the REIT's quarterly supplemental filing on its investor-relations site, not in regular yfinance feeds. See also: AFFO, FFO, REIT.

A regulatory label (under the Investment Company Act of 1940) for a fund that is allowed to concentrate a larger chunk of its assets in fewer holdings than a "diversified" fund. The technical line: a diversified fund must put no more than 5% of assets in any single issuer for at least 75% of its portfolio; non-diversified funds can break that rule, putting 10%, 20%, or even more in a single holding. The trade-off: bigger conviction bets can drive bigger gains when the call is right, but a single blow-up hurts much harder than it would in a 100-name index fund. Many specialty funds are intentionally non-diversified — sector ETFs, single-country funds, themed funds (cybersecurity, lithium, AI), and funds focused on a niche asset class like CLOs or emerging-market debt (e.g., JEMB). The "Non-Diversified" label is a heads-up to read the holdings and understand the concentration risk before buying.

An "option" is a contract that gives the buyer the RIGHT (not the obligation) to buy or sell a stock or index at a set price by a set date. The buyer pays a one-time fee called the "premium"; the seller (called the "writer") collects that premium up front. Calls = right to BUY. Puts = right to SELL. ETFs that build their entire investment thesis around buying or writing options are called options-overlay or defined-outcome funds, and they've become one of the fastest-growing corners of the dividend-ETF universe.

The strategies you'll see in real prospectuses (Innovator, JPMorgan, Global X, Defiance, NEOS, etc.):

• Covered Call (Buy-Write): The fund OWNS the stocks or index and SELLS call options against the holdings. The premiums collected become monthly income. The trade-off: if the index rallies sharply past the call's strike price, the fund's upside is capped — the buyer of the call gets the gains above that line. Best in flat or slowly-rising markets; underperforms in big bull rallies. Examples: JEPI, JEPQ, QYLD, XYLD, RYLD, SPYI, QQQI. ► State Street SPDR Premium Income family (11 funds) →
• Put-Write (Cash-Secured Put / Daily Put-Write): The fund holds cash or Treasuries and SELLS put options on a stock or index. The premium collected becomes income. If the index FALLS below the strike at expiration, the fund is obligated to buy at that strike (effectively buying the dip). Innovator's SPUT writes puts every single trading day — the "daily" cadence smooths out timing risk. Generates equity-like income while keeping the principal in cash most of the time. Examples: SPUT (Innovator daily put-write), PUTW, WTPI.
• Collar (Protective Collar): The fund holds the stock or index AND simultaneously BUYS a put (downside insurance) AND SELLS a call (to pay for the insurance). Brackets returns on both sides — losses are capped, but so are gains. Lower yields than pure covered-call funds because some of the premium is spent on the protective put. Used when an investor wants equity exposure with a known max-loss cushion.
• Buffer / Defined Outcome: Innovator's signature. Uses custom FLEX options on a stock index (S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, etc.) over a fixed 1-year outcome period to deliver TWO defined outcomes simultaneously: a CAPPED upside (e.g., +12% to +18%) and a DOWNSIDE BUFFER (the fund absorbs the first 9%, 15%, or 30% of losses; you only feel losses beyond the buffer). Reset annually. The famous "Power Buffer", "Buffer", and "Ultra Buffer" series are all built on this. Examples: Innovator BAUG, BJUL, BJAN, PJUL, UJUL; First Trust FAUG; AllianzIM AZBA.
• Floor ETF: A close cousin of buffer — instead of absorbing the FIRST N% of losses, the fund hard-caps the maximum loss at a defined number (e.g., "you cannot lose more than 10% over the outcome period"). Cleaner for retirees who care about a known worst case. Upside cap tends to be a bit lower as the cost of the harder floor. Examples: Innovator TFLR (Equity Managed Floor).
• Accelerated / Stacker ETF: Uses options to deliver 2× or even 3× of the index's upside up to a cap, while keeping 1× downside. Stacker ETFs "stack" one index on top of another (e.g., S&P 500 + Russell 2000) into a single fund. High potential upside but real downside risk. Examples: Innovator XBJL, QTJL; Stacker EQLS.
• Barrier ETF: A buffer that "knocks out" if the underlying breaches a defined barrier (e.g., -10%). As long as the index stays above the barrier, the buffer protects you. Cross the barrier intra-period and the buffer disappears — full downside exposure resumes. Higher upside cap than a regular buffer ETF in exchange for the knock-out risk. Examples: Innovator BFEB.
• Premium Income / Option-Overlay: Umbrella term for any fund whose monthly distributions come primarily from selling options on its holdings. Includes covered-call funds, put-write funds, and combinations. Many YieldMax single-stock funds (TSLY, NVDY, CONY) are option-overlay funds using synthetic covered-call structures to generate eye-popping yields with corresponding NAV decay risk.

⚠️ Common gotcha: Options-strategy ETFs almost always look great in flat or sideways markets and look painful during sharp bull rallies (the cap kicks in) or sustained bear markets (the buffer/floor only protects so much). Read the prospectus's "outcome period" section carefully — buffer/floor protections only hold if you buy at the start of the period and hold to the end. Buying mid-period gets you a different (often worse) effective cap and buffer than the headline number.

See also: CEF (Closed-End Fund), Derivatives, Hedge (Hedging), Leveraged ETF, Options-Income ETF.

An ETF that generates monthly distributions by writing (selling) call options against the stocks or indices it holds. Examples: JEPI, JEPQ, QYLD, the YieldMax single-stock funds. The trade-off: you collect higher monthly income but cap your upside if the underlying rallies hard. Yields are often 7–15% — sometimes legitimate, sometimes a warning zone — always check NAV trend over 1–3 years before trusting the headline yield.

The day the dividend cash actually shows up in your brokerage account. Always after the ex-dividend date — typically 2–4 weeks later.

Dividend ÷ Earnings, expressed as a percentage. Below 60% = safe with room to grow. 60–80% = moderate, sustainable but limited upside. 80–100% = high, almost no margin of safety. Above 100% = the company is paying more than it earns, which is usually unsustainable.

Share price ÷ EPS. A quick valuation snapshot. Under 10 = "value" territory (cheap, but maybe for a reason). 10–20 = fairly valued. 20–30 = priced for growth. Above 30 = high-growth or richly valued. Always compare to peers and to the company's own historical range.

Share price ÷ Book Value. Helpful for valuing financial companies (banks, insurers) and asset-heavy businesses (REITs). Below 1.0 means the market values the company at less than its accounting book value — sometimes a bargain, sometimes a warning.

Your holdings of a particular stock — usually a number of shares with a known cost basis. Tracked individually in My Portfolio so DiviDrip can compute gain/loss and per-position dividend income.

In the context of dual-class Brazilian ADRs (e.g., BBD), "PN" stands for "Preferenciais" — preferred shares that carry no voting rights but receive dividends roughly 10% higher than common shares and have 80% tag-along rights.

A named list of up to 5 tickers that a DiviDrip Community member has explicitly chosen to publish. Each member can publish up to 3 public watchlists (15 tickers max across all of them). Share counts and dollar amounts are NEVER published — only the tickers. A green "Verified Owner ✓" checkmark appears next to a ticker if the owner has actually imported a lot for it via CSV in the last 90 days. Other members can browse and follow public watchlists from the Community Hub.

A click-to-open popover that breaks the Dividend Quality Score (0-100) into its five contributing pillars: Safety (payout ratio), Yield, Growth (5-year dividend CAGR), Longevity (King/Aristocrat/Achiever streak), and Fundamentals (FinImpulse ROE/D/E/revenue-stability/dividend-policy bonuses or penalties). Each pillar shows points-earned out of points-possible plus a coloured progress bar; firing fundamental bonuses (e.g. "Strong ROE 18.4% +5") and structural penalties (e.g. "High Debt/Equity 2.7 −5") are listed individually below. Open it by clicking ANY Quality Score badge: on the Stock Modal header, on Portfolio rows, or on Screener results rows. Designed for one-click "should I add to this position?" gut-checks.

A side-by-side modal launched from the Watchlist Snapshot card (visible when your Watchlist has 2+ tickers). Stacks up to 6 watchlist tickers as columns and shows each Quality Score pillar as a row (Safety / Yield / Growth / Longevity / Fundamentals / Penalty / Composite). The leader of each pillar gets a gold trophy icon (only when STRICTLY ahead — no arbitrary tie-breakers). A "Winners:" line at the top summarises in plain English ("JEPQ wins Growth · KO wins Longevity · O overall 75/100"). Click any ticker name in the column header to open its Stock Modal. Killer "which one should I buy first?" decision tool when you're torn between candidates.

A dividend frequency where the company pays out four dividends per year — one every three months. The most common dividend schedule for U.S. stocks; the vast majority of S&P 500 dividend payers are on a quarterly cadence. See "Dividend Frequency" for the full list of frequencies (Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually).

The day the company looks at its books to decide who owns shares and is therefore entitled to the upcoming dividend. Usually one business day after the ex-dividend date. Day-to-day investors only need to remember the ex-div date.

A Quick Screens preset that surfaces stocks whose ex-dividend date fell in the past 7 days. Sorted newest-first (most recent ex-div at the top), then alphabetically within each day. Use cases: (1) spotting names you almost owned in time, (2) sanity-checking that you didn't miss buying a stock you meant to, (3) seeing which stocks just paid out across the dividend market. Mutually exclusive with the "Upcoming Ex-Div" filter — they look at opposite ends of the same calendar.

An optional sub-toggle on the Top Yielder Stock Crash and Top-Yielder-Cuts-Div presets (and on Custom Changes with action = crash or dividend cut). Pick Permanent (default — no bounce-back) or 3y / 5y / 10y. When >0, the crashed ticker's price and dividend linearly interpolate from the crashed value back up to the pre-crash value over that many years, then normal growth resumes — modelling realistic black-swan recoveries instead of permanent craters.

Pronounced "reet". A company that owns, operates, or finances income-producing real estate across sectors like apartments, offices, malls, warehouses, data centers, cell towers, healthcare facilities, hotels, or mortgage-backed securities. By law, a REIT must distribute at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders, which drives the typically-high yields (4-8% for equity REITs, 10-15% for mortgage REITs). REITs trade on major exchanges like regular stocks, letting individual investors get real-estate exposure without buying or managing physical property. Two main flavors: Equity REITs (own buildings, earn rent — O, PLD, AMT, WELL, VICI) and Mortgage REITs / mREITs (own mortgage loans + MBS, earn the spread — AGNC, NLY, STWD, BXMT). Tagged with an emerald "REIT" badge throughout DiviDrip. Our Quality Score uses a relaxed 90% payout cap for REITs (vs the usual 75%) because REIT payouts are correctly measured against AFFO / FFO, not GAAP earnings.

A DiviDrip Stock Modal panel that fires for any flagged REIT and replaces the GAAP-EPS view with the cash-flow view income investors actually use. Shows: (1) FFO per share — Net Income + Depreciation, pulled from yfinance; (2) Annual Dividend; (3) FFO Payout Ratio = dividend ÷ FFO per share; (4) Net Income for context (often negative on a REIT that's perfectly healthy). The panel surfaces a verdict pill — Very Safe (< 70%), Sweet Spot (70-85%), Stretched (85-100%), Risky (> 100%) — plus a plain-English explainer that anchors the number to what it means for the dividend's safety. Critical context: actual AFFO from a REIT's supplemental filing is typically 5-15% lower than FFO (it nets out recurring capex that yfinance can't isolate), so a 79% FFO payout often translates to a 65-75% AFFO payout — still in the sector sweet spot. Use this lens whenever the Dividend Triangle's EPS leg looks weak — it almost always does on REITs, and that signal alone is misleading. See also: AFFO, FFO, Dividend Triangle Score, REIT, Why EPS Lies for REITs.

For a REIT, the only payout ratio that matters is dividend ÷ FFO (or even better, dividend ÷ AFFO). The regular dividend ÷ EPS payout ratio is misleading for REITs because GAAP depreciation drags Net Income down — many healthy REITs report payout ratios over 200% of GAAP EPS while only paying out 60-80% of their actual cash flow. Sector targets: < 70% = very safe (cushion for vacancies, rate hikes, growth); 70-85% = sweet spot (generous to shareholders, keeps a buffer); 85-100% = stretched (covered but tight); > 100% = unsustainable without debt or asset sales. DiviDrip's Quality Score uses a relaxed 90% payout cap for REITs vs. the usual 75% for regular stocks, and the REIT Cash Lens panel shows the live FFO payout ratio with a color-coded verdict pill. Mortgage REITs (mREITs) are evaluated against "distributable income" or "core EPS" instead — FFO is for equity REITs only. See also: AFFO, FFO, REIT Cash Lens.

Top-line sales — the total dollar amount of products and services a company sold in the period before any costs are subtracted.

Year-over-year change in revenue, expressed as a percentage. Sustained revenue growth is a major support for dividend growth.

A DiviDrip-computed score of how steady a company's revenue has been over time. Higher = smoother, more recession-resistant top line. Helpful for identifying defensive dividend payers.

A toggle on the What If? page's Time Machine card that flips the simulator from forward-projection to a backwards historical replay. Instead of compounding an assumed growth rate, it uses REAL monthly Yahoo prices and dividends from the last N years to show what your current shares would have done through actual market conditions — a true backtest. See also "Backtest".

Net Income ÷ Total Assets. Measures how efficiently management turns the assets they have into profit. Higher is better; 5%+ is solid for most industries (banks naturally run lower).

Net Income ÷ Shareholder Equity. Measures profitability relative to shareholders' invested capital. Above 15% is generally strong. Caution: ROE can be artificially boosted by large debt loads, so always pair with D/E.

How efficiently a company turns every dollar invested in the business into profit, after accounting for its cost of capital. Above 20% = elite (strong moat); 10–20% = solid; 0–10% = mediocre; negative = the company is destroying value. The single best one-number quality check on a business.

Some funds "pay" you by returning your own money and labeling it a dividend. This lowers your cost basis but isn't real investment income. Common in CEFs and some monthly-pay ETFs. A high-yield fund whose distributions are mostly ROC is essentially a slow self-liquidation.

A retirement account where you contribute after-tax money, and growth + qualified withdrawals are completely tax-free. Considered the "optimal" home for high-yield dividend stocks because all dividends and DRIP reinvestments grow forever without ever being taxed. Two key rules: contribute earned income only, and withdrawals are tax-free after age 59½ once the account is 5+ years old.

An index of 500 of the largest U.S. publicly traded companies, weighted by market cap. Used as the default benchmark for "the market." DiviDrip's Growth vs S&P 500 chart shows how a stock has performed relative to it.

Up to 5 server-stored What-If configurations per user, pinned across devices. Save a scenario by giving it a name (e.g. "5y DRIP $200/mo split"); click a pill to reload all settings (changes, presets, DCA, sliders, DRIP years, time machine). Re-saving the same name overwrites the entry; oldest is evicted once you hit 5.

A 4-option poll (Buying / Holding / Trimming / Selling) that auto-rotates daily around the most-held tickers in the DiviDrip Community. Members vote anonymously; only aggregate percentages are visible. Sentiment percentages also overlay on the Community Dividend Calendar so you can see how the community feels about a stock heading into its ex-dividend date. Voting requires community membership.

The umbrella term Wall Street uses for any tradable financial asset that represents ownership in a company (equity), a loan to a borrower (debt), or a contractual right to a payment stream (derivatives, hybrids). When a fund prospectus says it "invests at least 80% of its net assets in securitized securities", it means the fund holds investment vehicles where the payments come from a pool of underlying loans or assets that have been bundled and sold to investors.

The securities you'll most often encounter inside dividend-fund prospectuses (especially for CLO and securitized-credit funds like JSI, JAAA, JBBB, JEMB):

• Asset-Backed Securities (ABS): Bonds whose payments come from a pool of consumer or business loans — auto loans, credit-card receivables, student loans, equipment leases, royalty streams. Sliced into tranches by risk just like CLOs.
• Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs): A specific kind of ABS backed by senior-secured corporate loans. See the dedicated CLO entry for the full layer-cake explanation.
• Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS): Bonds whose payments come from a pool of home-loan mortgages. Two flavors:
  • Agency MBS: Backed and guaranteed by U.S. government-sponsored entities (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae). Effectively risk-free on credit; only sensitive to interest rates and prepayment speed.
  • Non-Agency MBS: Issued by private banks/lenders without a government guarantee. Higher yields, real default risk if homeowners stop paying.
• Equity Securities: Common and preferred stock — slices of company ownership. The bulk of what most dividend-paying products hold.
• Debt Securities (Bonds): Loans to governments and corporations. See the Bonds entry for the full sub-list (Investment Grade, AAA, BB+, Junk, Perpetual, etc.).
• Hybrid / Convertible Securities: Bonds that can convert into stock under set rules. Pay a coupon like a bond but offer upside like a stock.
• Derivative Securities: Options, futures, swaps, and forwards whose value derives from another asset. See the Derivatives entry.

See also: Bonds, CLO (Collateralized Loan Obligation), Derivatives, Tranches.

A high-level industry grouping. DiviDrip uses the 11 GICS sectors: Technology, Healthcare, Financials, Consumer Cyclical, Consumer Defensive, Industrials, Energy, Utilities, Real Estate, Basic Materials, Communication Services. The Sector Rebalancer helps you weight your portfolio across these.

A DiviDrip tool that compares your current sector allocation to a target (e.g., 20% Tech, 15% Healthcare) and tells you exactly what to buy or sell to bring everything in line — including which specific tickers in your watchlist could fill each gap.

A dividend frequency where the company pays out two dividends per year, typically every six months. Most common for European and UK companies, and many ADRs of foreign-domiciled names. See "Dividend Frequency" for the full list of frequencies (Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually).

A copy-link button (🔗 icon) on each Saved Scenario pill in the What If? simulator. Clicking it copies a shareable URL (/whatif?s=<encoded>) to your clipboard — paste the link in a DM, Reddit, or Twitter and anyone who opens it lands on /whatif with the scenario pre-loaded, no account required. Zero-backend-cost way to share "here's what happens if you DRIP JEPI for 10y" with friends.

The total number of a company's shares currently held by all investors — including those held by insiders. Used to calculate market cap and EPS.

One unit of ownership in a company. Buying 10 shares of a stock makes you the proportional owner of 10 shares\' worth of the company\'s assets, voting rights, and future dividends. DiviDrip tracks several share-type distinctions because they each carry different consequences.

Long-Term Shares (LT) — shares held for MORE than 365 days. When you eventually sell them, gains qualify for U.S. federal long-term capital gains rates (0%, 15%, or 20% depending on your income bracket), which are typically much lower than your regular income tax rate. Long-term losses offset long-term gains first when filing taxes. The "more than one year" threshold is strict — a share held exactly 365 days is still short-term.

Short-Term Shares (ST) — shares held for 365 days OR LESS. Gains on these are taxed as ordinary income at your regular bracket (often 22-37% for U.S. filers), so they\'re typically the most expensive shares to sell at a profit. Short-term losses, however, offset short-term gains first — making them especially valuable for tax-loss harvesting if you have ST gains to offset that year. The Tax Lot Optimizer tags every lot as LT or ST based on the original purchase date so you can see at a glance which shares cross the 1-year mark when.

Fractional Shares — partial shares (e.g. 2.5731 shares of a stock). Modern brokers like Robinhood, Fidelity, and Schwab let you buy them so you can invest exact dollar amounts ($100 instead of "1.97 shares of NVIDIA at $50.76"). Particularly common with DRIP because dividends rarely match a whole-share price exactly. Fractional shares carry full voting rights on a proportional basis and earn dividends proportionally too — own 0.5 shares of a $1/yr dividend payer and you collect 50¢. DiviDrip stores share counts to 4 decimal places so DRIP-driven fractional buys remain accurate.

Whole Shares — non-fractional shares (e.g. 100 shares). The traditional unit, mandatory for some operations like exercising voting rights at most shareholder meetings, transferring shares between brokers (the receiving broker may round down fractional portions), or shorting (you can\'t short fractional shares). For most retail investing the distinction doesn\'t matter — your broker will handle it transparently.

Other share-type concepts you might encounter: Restricted Shares (typically employee-comp shares with a vesting schedule before they can be sold), Treasury Shares (shares the company itself has bought back, sitting on its balance sheet, no voting/dividends until reissued), Authorized vs Issued vs Outstanding Shares (Authorized = max corporate charter allows; Issued = actually created; Outstanding = held by external investors right now), and Class A / B / C Shares (different voting power or dividend rules within the same company; e.g. Alphabet\'s GOOG vs GOOGL). DiviDrip is focused on outstanding shares the public can buy on an exchange.

Number of shares sold short divided by average daily volume. Indicates how many days of normal trading it would take to cover all short positions. Above 5 means heavy short interest; potential for a "short squeeze" if the stock rallies.

Sponsored ADRs are issued in cooperation with the foreign company; the company files SEC reports and is subject to U.S. regulations. Unsponsored ADRs are created by U.S. banks without the foreign company's involvement and have less disclosure. Most sizable foreign companies trade as Sponsored ADRs.

A What If? preset / Custom Change action that drops BOTH the price AND dividend of a chosen ticker by a chosen percentage (10-95%). A real-world crash usually triggers a dividend cut alongside the price drop, so the preset models both. The "Top Yielder Stock Crash" preset auto-picks the highest-yielding position in your portfolio. Combine with the Recovery Period subtoggle to model bounce-back rather than permanent craters.

The fuchsia slider in the Time Machine card — sets the expected annual price change from -15% to +15%. Positive = market grows. Negative = market downturn. Applied as a compound annual rate to every position's price over the Time Machine horizon. Pair with Annual Dividend Growth to model different market environments (bull / bear / flat).

A DiviDrip tool that filters the entire database (~4,500 dividend-paying stocks and ETFs) by yield, payout ratio, sector, market cap, P/E, beta, debt, ROIC, FCF margin, dividend tier, frequency, and risk flags (Leveraged / Futures / ADR). Includes pre-built Quick Screens like "Blue Chip Income," "Monthly Payers," "ADRs (Foreign Companies)," etc.

DiviDrip's yield band label. The ideal range for income-focused investors like retirees. Moderate risk, generally stable — check the payout ratio. Often mature industries (utilities, real estate, telecom). Examples: Verizon, big oil, AT&T.

A shareholder protection — if a controlling shareholder sells their stake, minority shareholders have the right to "tag along" and sell at the same price under the same terms. In Brazilian dual-class ADRs, common (ON) shares get 100% tag-along rights; preferred (PN) shares get 80%.

Where Wall Street analysts collectively expect the stock to trade in the next 12 months. DiviDrip shows the high, mean (consensus), and low targets. Use them as one signal among many — analysts can be biased and slow to update.

See "Dividend Tier (King / Aristocrat / Achiever)" — DiviDrip's shorthand for how many consecutive years a stock has raised its dividend.

A discrete batch of shares purchased on a specific date at a specific price. The DiviDrip Portfolio supports multiple tax lots per ticker — every Buy creates a new lot, every Sell consumes from existing lots. Each lot tracks its own purchase date, cost basis, and term (long-term vs short-term) so the Tax Lot Optimizer can identify exactly which lots offer tax-loss harvest opportunities. Robinhood CSV imports automatically split positions into the same FIFO lots that Robinhood itself tracks.

Selling a lot with an unrealized loss to lock in a capital loss for tax purposes. The realized loss offsets capital gains dollar-for-dollar (long-term losses offset long-term gains first, short-term losses offset short-term gains first), and any remaining loss can offset up to $3,000 of ordinary income per year (US federal rules). The Tax Lot Optimizer surfaces every loss-eligible lot in your portfolio and totals up the harvestable amount in each tax bucket. Always confirm specific moves with a tax pro — wash-sale rules, qualified-dividend treatment, and state taxes can all change the math.

A toggle on every watchlist row that expands an orange info bar showing what a $1,000 investment in that ticker, made exactly 1 year ago with full DRIP turned on, would be worth today. Reports the current value of the $1,000 stake, the share count then vs now, total cash dividends received, total DRIP reinvestments, forward annual dividend income, yield on cost, and head-to-head returns vs SPY / SCHD / VYM benchmarks (also DRIP-on, same window). Closes with a plain-English Verdict pill — Great Buy / Good Buy / Lukewarm / Underperformed / Bad Buy — that summarises whether the past year actually beat the broad market. Cached server-side for 7 days and pre-warmed weekly so the bar opens instantly. Don't confuse this with the What-If "Time Machine" horizon slider — they're different features that happen to share a name.

The horizon setting on the What If? page — pick 1, 5, 10, 20, or 30 years. Every simulated change (DCA, DRIP, price + dividend growth, crashes, cuts) is compounded over that many years, and the Now vs What-If result cards both show projected end-of-horizon state. The Time Machine is always active — even a "do nothing" scenario projects your current portfolio forward at the chosen growth rate.

The plain-English summary pill on every Watchlist Time Machine bar. Compares your $1,000 stake's 1-year DRIP-on total return against SPY's 1-year DRIP-on total return over the same window. Five tiers: Great Buy = made money AND beat SPY by 5%+. Good Buy = made money AND matched or beat SPY. Lukewarm = made money but lagged SPY by less than 5%. Underperformed = made money but lagged SPY by 5% or more (the index would have been notably better). Bad Buy = lost money over the past year (your $1,000 with DRIP on is now worth less than $1,000). The verdict is meant as a quick sanity check, not a sell signal — a 1-year window is short and many quality dividend stocks lag SPY in any given year while still being long-term winners.

A What If? Quick Scenario preset (AlertTriangle icon) that auto-picks the highest-yielding position in your effective portfolio and applies a 10-95% crash to BOTH its price and dividend simultaneously. Pair with the Recovery Period subtoggle to model bounce-back over 3/5/10 years. Simulates the common "chase yield, get crushed" scenario — e.g., a high-yield CEF or BDC that blows up and recovers slowly over the following years.

Pronounced "tronsh" (it's the French word for "slice"). When a CLO, ABS, or MBS is built, the underlying pool of loans is sliced into layers that pay investors at DIFFERENT priority levels — like a layer cake. Cash from the underlying loans flows down through the cake top-first: senior tranches at the top get paid first and are therefore the safest (and earn the lowest yield); mezzanine tranches sit in the middle (moderate risk, moderate yield); equity tranches at the bottom get paid last and absorb the FIRST losses if loans in the pool go bad — so they earn the HIGHEST potential yield as compensation. This structure is called a "waterfall". A typical CLO might be sliced into 6-7 tranches: AAA (senior), AA, A, BBB, BB, B, and Equity. Funds like JAAA target ONLY the top AAA slice — the safest layer of the cake. Funds like JBBB target slightly lower tranches (BBB and up) for more yield. The riskiest tranche of any deal — the equity slice — is rarely sold to retail and usually held by the CLO manager themselves.

The total dollar dividend a stock actually paid out over the LAST 12 months — the verified historical figure, not the expected one. Compare against the Forward Dividend Rate (what the company has signalled for the next 12 months) to gauge dividend momentum. Forward > Trailing means the company has hiked its dividend; Forward < Trailing means it has cut. Both are USD-normalised so cross-market comparisons (e.g., a UK ADR paying in pence vs a US name paying in dollars) work apples-to-apples. The dollar gap between the two is the "Dividend Policy Delta" — see that entry for how DiviDrip uses it in the Quality Score and the Stock Modal banner.

P/E ratio based on the past 12 months of actual earnings. The most common P/E figure quoted on financial sites. Compare against Forward P/E to see whether analysts expect earnings to rise or fall.

The orange "Underperformed" pill on a Watchlist Time Machine bar means: your $1,000 stake (with DRIP on) made money over the past year, but it lagged SPY by 5% or more over the same window. The S&P 500 would have produced a notably better return. It does NOT mean the stock is bad — many quality dividend names underperform SPY in any given year while still being excellent long-term holdings (the dividend growth and lower drawdowns matter more on a 5-10 year view than a single trailing year). Use it as a prompt to check the dividend story — is the income still growing? is the payout safe? — before drawing any conclusions. See "Time Machine Verdict" for the full set of pills (Great Buy / Good Buy / Lukewarm / Underperformed / Bad Buy).

An ADR created by a U.S. bank without the foreign company's involvement, with limited SEC disclosure. Generally lower-quality and less liquid than Sponsored ADRs. See the full entry under "Sponsored ADR / Unsponsored ADR" in the S section.

A green checkmark badge that appears next to a DiviDrip Community member's handle on a public watchlist ticker. It means they imported a CSV from their brokerage in the last 90 days AND that ticker was present in the import. It does NOT mean DiviDrip audited their holdings — we never see your brokerage login or connect to your bank. It's a community trust signal: this member has actually opened a lot for the stock they're recommending, not just typed in a name.

How many shares of a stock changed hands on a given day. High volume = liquid, easy to buy or sell without moving the price. Low volume = wider bid/ask spreads and bigger price moves on small orders.

The most recent trade price. During regular market hours (9:30 AM – 4:00 PM Eastern) this updates live with every new trade routed to the consolidated tape. Outside those hours it reflects the last regular-session close (DiviDrip shows the prior trading day's close, not extended-hours prices, on this row).

The closing price from the most recent COMPLETED trading session. Today's daily change percentage is computed as (Current Price − Previous Close) / Previous Close. On Monday morning this is Friday's close; on a Tuesday after a Monday holiday, it's the prior Friday's close.

The low and high prices the stock has traded at so far during today's session. A wide day range usually signals high volatility or news flow; a narrow range signals quiet, low-conviction trading. Compare to the 52-week range to see whether today's action is unusual.

The lowest and highest prices the stock has traded at over the past 52 weeks (rolling, not calendar year). A common quick gauge of momentum — stocks near the 52-week high are trending up, near the low are out-of-favour or troubled. Watchlists often filter on "near 52-week low" to surface beaten-down dividend candidates.

The average closing price over the last 50 trading days. A common short-term trend indicator — when the current price crosses ABOVE its 50-day average, technical traders read momentum as positive; below, negative. The 50-day crossing the 200-day (the "golden cross" or "death cross") is watched even more closely.

The average closing price over the last 200 trading days. The long-term trend baseline. A stock above its 200-day average is in a long-term uptrend; below it, a downtrend. The most widely watched moving average among institutional traders.

Cash plus short-term investments on the balance sheet. A buffer for downturns and a war chest for buybacks, dividends, or acquisitions. Net cash position = Total Cash − Total Debt. Companies with strong net cash positions can sustain dividends through tough quarters without needing to refinance.

Sum of all interest-bearing borrowings (short-term and long-term loans, bonds, capitalised lease obligations). Compare to Total Cash for net cash position, and to Market Cap or Equity for leverage scale. Rising debt during a downturn is often the first sign of dividend trouble.

Morningstar's standardised classification for the fund — e.g. "Large Blend", "Mid Growth", "High Yield Bond", "Real Estate". Used for peer comparisons. Only compare expense ratios and returns within the same category; comparing a small-cap value ETF to a large-cap growth ETF tells you nothing.

The sponsoring asset manager — Vanguard, BlackRock (iShares), JPMorgan, Schwab, State Street (SPDR), Invesco, etc. Different families have different reputations for cost (Vanguard, Schwab), product breadth (iShares), or active-management quality (JPMorgan, Fidelity). The sponsor doesn't guarantee performance but affects fee structure and product longevity.

The percentage of a fund's holdings replaced each year. Index funds typically run 5-20% (low — passive, tax-efficient). Actively managed funds often 50-150% (the manager is constantly buying and selling). High turnover means more taxable capital gains distributions in non-IRA accounts AND higher hidden trading costs that erode returns even when not visible in the expense ratio.

Morningstar's 3×3 grid that classifies a fund by company size (Large / Mid / Small) and investment style (Value / Blend / Growth). Examples: "Large Value" = big established companies trading at low multiples; "Small Growth" = small fast-growing companies. A balanced portfolio usually holds funds across multiple style-box squares.

Current Price ÷ Revenue Per Share — how much investors pay per dollar of sales. Especially useful for companies with no earnings yet (growth tech, early-stage businesses, biotech) where the P/E ratio is undefined or meaningless. P/S < 1 generally signals a cheap valuation; P/S > 10 signals heavy growth expectations baked into the price.

Current Price ÷ Cash Flow Per Share. Often considered more reliable than P/E because cash flow is much harder to manipulate through accounting choices (depreciation methods, inventory accounting, stock-based comp). P/CF < 10 is cheap for most established businesses; > 20 is expensive outside of high-growth tech.

A 1-5 star rating Morningstar assigns based on a fund's risk-adjusted returns vs peers in the same category over 3, 5, and 10-year periods. A 5-star fund is in the top 10% of its category historically. The rating updates monthly. As Morningstar themselves disclose, this is backward-looking and past performance is no guarantee of future results.

A DiviDrip view (logged-in users) of every ticker you have starred — without owning shares. Use it to follow potential buys, monitor ex-div dates, and read inline news for stocks on your radar.

A summary card that sits at the top of the Watchlist view (visible when your Watchlist has 1+ tickers). At-a-glance facts: Avg Quality Score with the best & worst tickers (clickable), Yield Range (low → high with tickers on each end), Top Sectors as horizontal bars, and a list of every ticker with an Ex-Div date in the next 7 days. When any watched ticker has flagged a Recent Hike or Recent Cut, additional boxes appear below listing those. The "Compare Quality" button on the card opens the Compare Quality modal — see that entry. Designed to turn the Watchlist from a passive list into an actionable dashboard so you spot opportunities and risks the moment you open the page.

Compact "why on radar" chips that appear next to a stock's Tier and Quality badges ON THE WATCHLIST VIEW ONLY (kept noise-free elsewhere). Two chip types: "Ex-div in Xd" (sky blue, fires when next ex-dividend date is ≤7 days away) and "Near 52w low" (violet, fires when current price is within 5% of the 52-week low). The existing CUT/RAISE/STREAK chips and Quality badge already cover the other reason-to-act signals, so these two fill the remaining gaps. See "Ex-Div Soon" and "Near 52-Week Low" for the individual entries.

A dividend frequency where the company pays out 52 dividends per year — one every week. Very rare and almost always associated with newer leveraged or options-income ETFs (some YieldMax-style funds, single-stock derivatives ETFs). Almost never seen for individual stocks. See "Dividend Frequency" for the full list of frequencies (Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually).

A DiviDrip page (/whatif) that lets you run hypothetical scenarios on top of your real portfolio — without touching a single share. Supports: Quick Scenario presets (boost top yielder, swap riskiest for a King, 2× best performer, DRIP for 5y, cut top yielder 50%, crash top yielder), Add/Remove positions, Custom Changes (modify, replace, crash, dividend cut — each with optional Recovery Period), DCA preset ($/mo across selected tickers, Each or Split mode), Time Machine (1/5/10/20/30 years), annual dividend growth + stock price sliders, DRIP toggle, Reverse Mode (historical backtest), Saved Scenarios, and Share Scenario links. Renders Now vs What-If side-by-side metric cards, an income projection line chart, two sector pies, and a simulated holdings table.

GAAP accounting forces every company to depreciate the value of long-lived physical assets — for a REIT that means writing down the buildings every year as if they were getting worn out, even though commercial real estate typically appreciates. The depreciation is a non-cash expense (no money actually leaves the company) but it slams Net Income and therefore EPS. A textbook example is PINE (Alpine Income Property Trust): its GAAP EPS is mildly negative, yet its actual cash from operations easily covers a $1.20 annual dividend, because $26M+ of "depreciation" was on paper. This is why the Dividend Triangle's EPS leg can paint a misleading "weak" picture for fundamentally healthy REITs, and why DiviDrip puts a REIT Cash Lens panel on the Stock Modal for any flagged REIT — it strips out the depreciation noise (FFO = NI + D&A) and shows you the REIT-native payout ratio income investors actually use. The bottom line: when evaluating a REIT, use FFO/AFFO payout ratio — NOT EPS payout ratio. See also: AFFO, FFO, REIT Cash Lens, REIT Payout Ratio.

Current Yield = annualized dividend ÷ today's price. Forward Yield = expected next-12-months dividend ÷ today's price. Trailing Yield = past-12-months dividend ÷ today's price. They're usually similar; differ most when a stock recently raised, cut, or paid a special dividend.

Comparing a metric this year to the same metric one year ago — revealed as a percentage change. YoY smooths out seasonal noise (a retailer's Q4 vs Q4, not Q4 vs Q1) and lets you instantly see whether a business is growing, flat, or shrinking on a 12-month horizon. YoY shows up across DiviDrip as Revenue YoY, EPS YoY, FFO YoY (on the REIT Cash Lens), and dividend YoY. Negative YoY isn't automatically bad — it can mean an investment year or a tough comparison — but several quarters of negative YoY in a row is a warning that the engine driving the dividend may be shrinking. See also: CAGR (a smoother multi-year version of the same idea).

The dividend yield calculated against your original cost basis instead of today's price. Example: if you bought a stock at $50 paying $2/share annually (4% yield) and the dividend has since grown to $4/share, your YoC is now 8%, even if the current yield to a new buyer is much lower. YoC tracks how good the original purchase has gotten over time, which is the heart of dividend-growth investing.

A stock with a misleadingly attractive dividend yield. The yield looks high not because the company is healthy, but because the share price keeps falling — every quarter NAV slips, the price drops further on the ex-dividend date, and it never recovers. The dividend itself is at risk of being cut. Common warning signs: payout ratio above 100%, declining revenue and earnings, rising debt, and a chart that has been steadily lower for a year or more. Anything yielding 11%+ outside of REITs and BDCs deserves a hard second look.