Forward Income
The dividend income your portfolio is on track to pay over the next 12 months at today's dividend rate. Also called the indicated annual dividend.
Forward Income is a snapshot of the present, not a prediction of the future.
It answers a simple question: "If every company kept paying exactly what it pays right now, how much would I collect over the next year?" No growth assumptions, no forecasting model, no guesswork — just the current run-rate. This is the number behind your Forward Yield.
The Standard Definition
Across the industry, forward (indicated) income is calculated by taking a stock's most recent regular dividend payment and annualizing it based on how often the company pays. A stock that just paid $0.50 and pays quarterly has an indicated annual dividend of $2.00 ($0.50 × 4).
It deliberately ignores what might happen next — future raises, cuts, or special dividends. That makes it a stable, honest baseline for measuring current yield.
How We Calculate It
Step 1: Each Holding's Indicated Dividend
For every holding we annualize the latest confirmed regular dividend using our own dividend-history dataset, which is refreshed weekly:
Frequency is the number of regular payments per year (12 for monthly, 4 for quarterly, 2 for semi-annual, 1 for annual). If we don't yet have a clean payment history for a holding, we fall back to the provider's published forward dividend figure so the number is never left blank.
Step 2: Convert to Your Currency
Each holding's indicated dividend is multiplied by your share count and converted into your portfolio's base currency using current FX rates, so a portfolio mixing USD, CAD, and other currencies adds up correctly.
Step 3: Portfolio Forward Income & Yield
We sum every holding's indicated income to get portfolio Forward Income, then divide by market value to get Forward Yield:
Forward Income vs. Forecasted Dividends
These are two different numbers by design. Forward Income is the current run-rate — a flat annualization of today's dividend. Forecasted Dividends is a forward-looking projection that models the timing and growth of each future payment, so it can be higher or lower than the indicated figure.
Read how we forecast dividends →