How Dividend Vision calculates yield and safety

Forward distribution rate

The forward distribution rate is the latest regular dividend multiplied by the number of payouts in a year, divided by the last close. A quarterly payer uses 4, a monthly payer 12, a weekly payer 52. A daily payer uses 252 sessions, not 365. The published rate is capped at 200%.

Weekly and daily funds do not trust a single payout times N when that product would sit above a monthly annualization. When a median of the last four payouts is available from the cross-check feed, that median is what gets annualized. If the forward rate is at least twice the realized trailing-12-month yield and that trailing window is complete, the rate we publish is the realized trailing yield instead. A payout more than about 550 days old is not annualized on the page.

Distribution rate, in plain language

Trailing-12-month yield

Trailing-12-month yield is the sum of split-adjusted distributions over the last 12 months, divided by the last close. It is stored as trailing_yield and shown beside the forward rate when the field exists. It lags a recent raise or cut, which is why it can sit above or below the forward rate on the same fund.

SEC yield

SEC yield is the 30-day SEC yield (sec_yield_30d) when a vendor has published one. Dividend Vision does not compute that standardized figure. Many funds have no SEC yield in the catalog. It is not the forward distribution rate and not the trailing-12-month yield. Subtracting the expense ratio from a distribution rate a second time double-counts costs the fund has already netted.

Distribution Safety Score™

The Distribution Safety Score™ is an educational 0–100 reading of how strained a payout looks. Method version 1.6 starts at 100 and subtracts penalties, then clamps the result to 0–100. It is not a credit rating and not a forecast that the next payment will arrive.

Price-path penalties share one ceiling. Price erosion, a covered-call price decline, drawdown, long-term price decline, and beta are marked as market risk. If those penalties sum to more than 35, they are scaled down together so the group deducts 35. Other penalties sit outside that cap.

The score is withheld for money-market funds, non-payers, and inverse or short products unless the fund is also a covered-call, options, or autocallable strategy. An unproven payout record (fewer than 8 payouts, or less than 6 months of span, with the span read against the fund's own cadence) cannot score above 50. Low confidence cannot score above 79.

Penalty caps in version 1.6, each applied only when its inputs exist:

• Falling payout, up to 35 (0.7 times the one-year dividend decline).
• Past dividend cut, up to 28 (0.6 times the five-year cut).
• Price erosion, up to 25, inside the market-risk cap.
• Covered price decline, up to 25, when the adjusted return is flat or up and the raw price is down at least 0.5%, inside the market-risk cap.
• Volatile price, up to 12, from drawdown past 20%, inside the market-risk cap.
• Long-term raw decline, up to 18, inside the market-risk cap.
• Beta above 1.3, up to 6, inside the market-risk cap.
• Very high yield, up to 15, past a soft cap of 8% (12% for BDC, CEF, MLP, and REIT; 40% for option-income).
• Leverage, up to 12. Crypto exposure outside the market cap, up to 12. Target-maturity funds, up to 12. Missed distribution, 25. Skipped payments, 18. Irregular cadence, up to 22. Thin earnings coverage, up to 10, for BDCs and non-REIT stocks only. Cost and size, up to 8. A very low share price, stocks only, up to 12.

How to read a Distribution Safety Score

Safety-Adjusted Yield™

Safety-Adjusted Yield™ multiplies a trusted income rate by the safety score divided by 100. The trusted rate is the forward distribution rate when that rate is trusted, otherwise the trailing-12-month yield. The score is clamped between 0 and 100 before the multiply.

The figure is blank when there is no score, the score is flagged unusable, the record is unproven or irregular, the cadence is unknown (unless an annualization period is already set), or the rate is not trusted. A rate is untrusted when a review is required, confidence is low, or the provenance is stale.

Data sources

Published prices, dividends, and splits come from EODHD. The dividend history pages read the committed EODHD dividend-history files, on a split-adjusted per-current-share basis. yfinance is a cross-check. It is not the history those pages display. Issuer calendars, when we have a reviewed schedule, override a cadence guess for upcoming dates. Editorial names, issuers, and tags come from the ticker markdown, not from the vendor feed.

Refresh cadence

End-of-day prices land in a nightly bulk pass after the US close. The public ticker catalog is rebuilt in that same nightly materialize. Dividend history files are exported nightly. Fundamentals are not refetched for every ticker every night: held and popular names refresh daily, unheld stocks weekly, and unheld funds on an adaptive interval that lengthens when the payload does not change, up to seven days.

Quotes during the session are delayed about 20 minutes. They are not a live tape. A portfolio value while the market is open can sit about 20 minutes behind the exchange print. A quote more than one trading session behind is labeled stale.

Public data files

Three JSON files are the machine-readable copies of what the pages use. Each is offered under the Terms of Service.

• tickers.json — the full catalog, including distribution rate and trailing yield.
• screener-slim.json — the rows behind screens and income lists.
• ticker-index.json — symbols and names for search.