According to yahoo finance, Vanguard's Dividend Growth Fund does not appear to have dividend growth. Why is that?
I think you are mixing up forward looking statements with the actual results. The funds objective   The fund invests primarily in stocks that tend to offer current dividends. It focuses on high-quality companies that have prospects for long-term total returns as a result of their ability to grow earnings and their willingness to increase dividends over time Obviously in 1993 quite a few companies paid the dividends and hence VDIGX was able to give dividends. Over the period of years in some years its given more and in some years less. For example the Year 2000 it gave $ 1.26, 1999 it gave $ 1.71 and in 1998 it gave $ 1.87 The current economic conditions are such that companies are not making huge profts and the one's that are making prefer not to distribute dividends and hold on to cash as it would help survive the current economic conditions. So just to clarify this particular funds objective is to invest in companies that would give dividends which is then passed on to fund holders. This fund does not sell appreciated stocks to convert it into dividends.
"Yahoo Finance is definitely a good one, and its ultimately the source of the data that a lot of other places use (like the iOS Stocks app), because of their famous API. Another good dividend website is Dividata.com.  It's a fairly simple website, free to use, which provides tons of dividend-specific info, including the highest-yield stocks, the upcoming ex-div dates, and the highest-rated stocks based on their 3-metric rating system.  It's a great place to find new stocks to investigate, although you obviously don't want to stop there.  It also shows dividend payment histories and ""years paying,"" so you can quickly get an idea of which stocks are long-established and which may just be flashes in the pan. For example:  Lastly, I've got a couple of iOS apps that really help me with dividend investing: Compounder is a single-stock compound interest calculator, which automatically looks up a stock's info and calculates a simulated return for a given number of years, and Dividender allows you to input your entire portfolio and then calculates its growth over time as a whole.     The former is great for researching potential stocks, running scenarios, and deciding how much to invest, while the latter is great for tracking your portfolio and making plans regarding your investments overall." This is really an extended comment on the last paragraph of @BenMiller's answer. When (the manager of) a mutual fund sells securities that the fund holds for a profit, or receives dividends (stock dividends, bond interest, etc.), the fund has the option of paying taxes on that money (at corporate rates) and distributing the rest to shareholders in the fund, or passing on the entire amount (categorized as dividends, qualified dividends, net short-term capital gains, and net long-term capital gains) to the shareholders who then pay taxes on the money that they receive at their own respective tax rates. (If the net gains are negative, i.e. losses, they are not passed on to the shareholders. See the last paragraph below).  A shareholder doesn't have to reinvest the distribution amount into the mutual fund: the option of receiving the money as cash always exists, as does the option of investing the distribution into a different mutual fund in the same family, e.g. invest the distributions from Vanguard's S&P 500 Index Fund into Vanguard's Total Bond Index Fund (and/or vice versa). This last can be done without needing a brokerage account, but doing it across fund families will require the money to transit through a brokerage account or a personal account. Such cross-transfers can be helpful in reducing the amounts of money being transferred in re-balancing asset allocations as is recommended be done once or twice a year. Those investing in load funds instead of no-load funds should keep in mind that several load funds waive the load for re-investment of distributions but some funds don't: the sales charge for the reinvestment is pure profit for the fund if the fund was purchased directly or passed on to the brokerage if the fund was purchased through a brokerage account. As Ben points out, a shareholder in a mutual fund must pay taxes (in the appropriate categories) on the distributions  from the fund even though no actual cash has been received because the entire distribution has been reinvested. It is worth keeping in mind that when the mutual fund declares a distribution (say $1.22 a share), the Net Asset Value per share drops by the same amount (assuming no change in the prices of the securities that the fund holds) and the new shares issued are at this lower price. That is, there is no change in the value of the investment: if you had $10,000 in the fund the day before the distribution was declared, you still have $10,000 after the distribution is declared but you own more shares in the fund than you had previously. (In actuality, the new shares appear in your account a couple of days later, not immediately when the distribution is declared).  In short, a distribution  from a mutual fund that is re-invested leads to no change in your net assets, but does increase your tax liability. Ditto for a distribution that is taken as cash or re-invested elsewhere. As a final remark, net capital losses inside a mutual fund are not distributed to shareholders but are retained within the fund to be written off against future capital gains. See also this previous answer  or this one. Check out the questions about why stock prices are what they are. In a nutshell, a stock's value is based on the future prospects of the company. Generally speaking, if a growth company is paying a dividend, that payment is going to negatively affect the growth of the business. The smart move is to re-invest that capital and make more money. As a shareholder, you are compensated by a rising stock price. When a stock isn't growing quickly, a dividend is a better way for a stockholder to realize value. If a gas and electric company makes a billion dollars, investing that money back into the company is not going to yield a large return. And since those types of companies don't really grow too much, the stocks typically trade in a range and don't see the type of appreciation that a growth stock will. So it makes sense to pay out the dividend to the shareholders. After searching a bit and talking to some investment advisors in India I got below information. So thought of posting it so that others can get benefited. This is specific to indian mutual funds, not sure whether this is same for other markets. Even currency used for examples is also indian rupee. A mutual fund generally offers two schemes: dividend and growth. The dividend option does not re-invest the profits made by the fund though its investments. Instead, it is given to the investor from time to time. In the growth scheme, all profits made by the fund are ploughed back into the scheme. This causes the NAV to rise over time. The impact on the NAV The NAV of the growth option will always be higher than that of the dividend option because money is going back into the scheme and not given to investors.  How does this impact us? We don't gain or lose per se by selecting any one scheme. Either we make the choice to get the money regularly (dividend) or at one go (growth). If we choose the growth option, we can make money by selling the units at a high NAV at a later date. If we choose the dividend option, we will get the money time and again as well as avail of a higher NAV (though the NAV here is not as high as that of a growth option). Say there is a fund with an NAV of Rs 18. It declares a dividend of 20%. This means it will pay 20% of the face value. The face value of a mutual fund unit is 10 (its NAV in this case is 18). So it will give us Rs 2 per unit. If we own 1,000 units of the fund, we will get Rs 2,000. Since it has paid Rs 2 per unit, the NAV will fall from Rs 18 to Rs 16. If we invest in the growth option, we can sell the units for Rs 18. If we invest in the dividend option, we can sell the units for Rs 16, since we already made a profit of Rs 2 per unit earlier. What we must know about dividends The dividend is not guaranteed. If a fund declared dividends twice last year, it does not mean it will do so again this year. We could get a dividend just once or we might not even get it this year. Remember, though, declaring a dividend is solely at the fund's discretion; the periodicity is not certain nor is the amount fixed. Look at their dividend history.  The chart there is simply reporting the most recent dividend (or a recent time period, in any event).  GF for example: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/gf/dividend-history It's had basically two significant dividends and a bunch of small dividends.  Past performance is not indicative of future returns and all that.  It might never have a similar dividend again. What you're basically looking at with that chart is a list of recently well-performing funds - funds who had a good year.  They obviously may or may not have such a good year next year. You also have funds that are dividend-heavy (intended explicitly to return significant dividends).  Those may return large dividends, but could still fall in value significantly.  Look at ACP for example: it's currently trading near it's 2-year low.  You got a nice dividend, but the price dropped quite a bit, so you lost a chunk of that money.  (I don't know if ACP is a dividend-heavy fund, but it looks like it might be.) GF's chart is also indicative of something interesting: it fell off a cliff right after it gave its dividend (at the end of the year).  Dropped $4.  I think that's because this is a mutual fund priced based on the NAV of its holdings - so it dividended some of those holdings, which dropped the share price (and the NAV of the fund) by that amount.  IE, $18 a share, $4 a share dividend, so after that $14 a share.  (The rest of the dividends are from stock holdings which pay dividends themselves, if I understand properly).  Has a similar drop in Dec 2013.  They may simply be trying to keep the price of the fund in the ~$15 a share range; I suspect (but don't know) that some funds have in their charter a requirement to stay in a particular range and dividend excess value. Cash flow is needed for expansion, either to increase manufacturing capacity or to expand the workforce. Other times companies use it to purchase other companies. Microsoft and Google have both used their cash or stocks to purchase companies. Examples by Google include YouTube, Keyhole (Google Earth), and now part of Motorola to expand into Phones. If you are investing for the future, you don't want a lot of dividends. They do bring tax issues. That is not a big problem if you are investing in an IRA or 401K. It is an issue if the non-tax-defered mutual fund distributes those dividends via the 1099, forcing you to address it on your taxes each year. Some investors do like dividends, but they are looking for their investments to generate cash. Who would require it? Would it be an SEC requirement? Even more government paperwork for companies. "Regarding SPY: ""One SPDR unit is valued at approximately 1/10 of the value of the S&P 500. Dividends are distributed quarterly, and are based on the accumulated stock dividends held in trust, less any expenses of the trust.""  (source)  These are depository receipts, not the actual stocks. Regarding IVV: ""The component stocks are weighted according to the total float-adjusted market value of their outstanding shares. The Fund invests in sectors, such as energy, information technology, industrials, financials, consumer staples, healthcare, telecom services, consumer discretionary and materials.""  (more here) VOO is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The tracking error seems pretty small to me.  I went to Google Finance and plotted the percent change for all four on one chart.  They lie pretty much on top of one another.  The actual dollar value of each one doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that they move up and down almost in lock-step.  There may be a larger difference going farther out, but for three separate financial products, the agreement is still remarkably good." "The graphing tools within Yahoo offer a decent level of adjustment. You can easily choose start and end years, and 2 or more symbols to compare.  I caution you. From Jan 1980 through Dec 2011, the S&P would have grown $1 to $29.02, (See Moneychimp) but, the index went up from 107.94 to 1257.60, growing a dollar to only $11.65. The index, and therefore the charts, do not include dividends. So long term analysis will yield false results if this isn't accounted for.  EDIT  - From the type of question this is, I'd suggest you might be interested in a book titled ""Stock Market Logic."" If memory serves me, it offered up patterns like you suggest, seasonal, relations to Presidential cycle, etc. I don't judge these approaches, I just recall this book exists from seeing it about 20 years back."