Displaying & Collecting Dividends in Exchange’s Default Currency

Many stocks give out dividends and it is what many investors like about investing.

Often, dividends are listed in the currency that the stock is traded in. However, there are many exceptions to that, especially for foreign-listed companies. For example, United Overseas Australia Limited is traded in SGD but states its dividends in AUD.

In StocksCafe, I wrongly assumed that you would receive the dividends in the listed currency as it is not likely to be true. It would depend on your trading platform and based on my experience, it is often given in the exchange’s default currency. Hence over the weekend, I made changes to StocksCafe to better handle these situations.

1) Include Exchange’s Default Currency When Displaying – Example: United Overseas Australia Limited and Agricultural Bank of China Limited

2) Collect Dividends in Exchange’s Default Currency – You can now state whether you prefer to receive dividends in the listed currency or the exchange’s default currency in settings. Note that by default, I assume that you want it in the exchange’s default currency.

3) Convert Past Cash Transactions to Exchange’s Default Currency – As you might have past cash transactions that are associated to dividends which are not in the exchange’s default currency, I have created links in the settings for you to convert all of these past transactions to the exchange’s default currency if you like.

However, note that since it is not always stated what the dividend amount would be in the default exchange’s currency, I will simply convert them based on the currency rate that StocksCafe has. If that is not good enough for you, you can always override dividends using this feature.

As usual, this issue is highlighted to me by users of StocksCafe. Thank you all for always giving feedback and suggestions to make StocksCafe better!

Happy investing!