The Outlook for S&P 500 Dividends in May 2025

The outlook for the S&P 500′s dividends in upcoming quarters has improved considerably over the month since our previous snapshot of the future.

Each of 2025′s remaining quarters to be completed showed improvement. Here’s the short summary of how they changed and what the expectations are as of the close of trading on Tuesday, 15 May 2025.

• 2025-Q2: Increase of $0.02, rising to $19.07 per share
• 2025-Q3: Increase of $0.14, rising to $19.10 per share
• 2025-Q4: Increase of $0.46, rising to $19.30 per share

The following animated chart shows how expectations for the S&P 500′s quarterly dividends per share changed in the month from 15 April 2025 to 15 May 2025. If you’re reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to see the animation.

The picture changes a little when we compare our May 2025 snapshot with our 14 March 2025 snapshot, which was taken before President Trump’s 2 April 2025 ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement. That action knocked the dividend outlook lower in its immediate aftermath, which bottomed about a week before our 15 April 2025 snapshot before beginning to recover.

As of 15 May 2025, the outlook for dividends in the current quarter of 2025-Q2 has surpassed its mid-March 2025 level by $0.22 per share. Meanwhile, expected dividends in 2025-Q3 has recovered all but $0.05 per share of its value, but 2025-Q4 remains some $0.30 per share short of its projected level from 14 March 2025.

How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in stock prices is described by this math.

More About Dividend Futures Data

For this series, we have been taking a snapshot of the CME Group’s S&P 500 quarterly dividend futures data shortly after the second or third week of each month.

Dividend futures indicate the amount of dividends per share to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter’s dividend futures contracts, which start on the day after the preceding quarter’s dividend futures contracts expire and end on the third Friday of the month ending the indicated quarter. So for example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now “current” quarter of 2025-Q2 began on Saturday, 22 March 2025 and will end on Friday, 20 June 2025.

That makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures reported by Standard and Poor. S&P reports the amount of dividends per share paid out during regular calendar quarters after the end of each quarter. This term mismatch accounts for the differences in dividends reported by both sources, with the biggest differences between the two typically seen in the first and fourth quarters of each year.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: “A crystal ball with the word ‘SP 500′ written inside it”. And ‘Dividends’ written above it, which we added.