# FinancialData gives incorrect returns for all securities on dividend days

**URL:** <https://community.wolfram.com/t/financialdata-gives-incorrect-returns-for-all-securities-on-dividend-days/2497>\
**Category:** Ideas\
**Tags:** finance\
**Created:** [June 28, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/financialdata-gives-incorrect-returns-for-all-securities-on-dividend-days/2497 "2014-06-28T03:36:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![petrosyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@petrosyan](https://community.wolfram.com/u/petrosyan)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/financialdata-gives-incorrect-returns-for-all-securities-on-dividend-days/2497/1 "2014-06-28T03:36:05Z")

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I am pretty sure that **FinancialData** gives incorrect returns for all stocks, ETFs and other securities on distribution days.

Let’s take an example of **SPY** ETF that payed a dividend of 0.937 USD (or 0.48%) on June 20th, 2014.

On June 19th the raw close price was **196.48** and on June 20th the raw close price was **195.94**.  
This means that the fractional change in price was **195.94/196.48 -1 = -0.27%**

However, once you adjust for the dividend on that day you get **0.48%-0.27%=+0.21%** return.

FinancialData function gives +0.21% FractionalChange on that day and a **+0.68% return!!!**

This is clearly a bug since it is double counting the dividends!

```
FinancialData["SPY", "Return", {{2014, 6, 19}, {2014, 6, 20}}]
FinancialData["SPY", "FractionalChange", {{2014, 6, 19}, {2014, 6, 20}}]
FinancialData["SPY", "Close", {{2014, 6, 19}, {2014, 6, 20}}]
FinancialData["SPY", "RawClose", {{2014, 6, 19}, {2014, 6, 20}}]

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lvveen](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/wolfram/user_avatar/community.wolfram.com/lvveen/32/4003_2.png) [@lvveen](https://community.wolfram.com/u/lvveen)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/financialdata-gives-incorrect-returns-for-all-securities-on-dividend-days/2497/2 "2014-08-30T18:27:37Z")

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Did you report this as a bug to Wolfram?  
Just curious.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![petrosyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/50afbb/32.png) [@petrosyan](https://community.wolfram.com/u/petrosyan)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/financialdata-gives-incorrect-returns-for-all-securities-on-dividend-days/2497/3 "2014-09-04T21:12:59Z")

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Yes, I did report it, but Wolfram needed my registration info which I don’t have. I was testing it on the free version of Wolfram Cloud.