How do I calculate the actual dividend amount for a monthly dividend payout mutual fund?
In the absence of a country designation where the mutual fund is registered, the question cannot be fully answered.  For US mutual funds, the N.A.V per share is calculated each day after the close of the stock exchanges and all purchase and redemption requests received that day are transacted at this share price. So, the price of the mutual fund shares for April 2016 is not enough information: you need to specify the date more accurately. Your calculation of what you get from the mutual fund is incorrect because in the US, declared mutual fund dividends are net of the expense ratio. If the declared dividend is US$ 0.0451 per share, you get a cash payout of US$ 0.0451 for each share that you own: the expense ratio has already been subtracted before the declared dividend is calculated.  The N.A.V. price of the mutual fund also falls by the amount of the per-share dividend (assuming that the price of all the fund assets (e.g. shares of stocks, bonds etc) does not change that day). Thus. if you have opted to re-invest your dividend in the same fund, your holding has the same value as before, but you own more shares of the mutual fund (which have a lower price per share). For exchange-traded funds, the rules are slightly different. In other jurisdictions, the rules might be different too. So if someone would invest 14000 credits on 1st April 2016, he'd get monthly dividend = ((14000 ÷ 14) × 0.0451) × (1 - 1.42 ÷ 100) = 44.459 credits, right? One would get ((14000 ÷ 14) × 0.0451) = 45.1 is what you would get. The expenses are not to be factored. Generally if a scheme has less expense ratio, the yield is more. i.e. this has already got factored in 0.0451. If the expense ratio was less, this would have been 0.05 if expense ration would have been more it would have been 0.040. Can I then consider the bank deposit earning a higher income per month than the mutual fund scheme? As the MIP as classified as Hybrid funds as they invest around 30% in equities, there is no tax on the income. More so if there is a lock-in of 3 years. In Bank FD, there would be tax applicable as per tax brackets.
Theoretically, yes, you can only buy or sell whole shares (which is why you still have .16 shares in your account; you can't sell that fraction on the open market). This is especially true for voting stock; stock which gives you voting rights in company decisions makes each stock one vote, so effectively whomever controls the majority of one stock gets that vote. However, various stock management policies on the part of the shareholder, brokerage firm or the issuing company can result in you owning fractional shares. Perhaps the most common is a retirement account or other forward-planning account. In such situations, it's the dollar amount that counts; when you deposit money you expect the money to be invested in your chosen mix of mutual funds and other instruments. If the whole-shares rule were absolute, and you wanted to own, for instance, Berkshire Hathaway stock, and you were contributing a few hundred a month, it could take you your entire career of your contributions sitting in a money-market account (essentially earning nothing) before you could buy even one share. You are virtually guaranteed in such situations to end up owning fractions of shares in an investment account. In these situations, it's usually the fund manager's firm that actually holds title to the full share (part of a pool they maintain for exactly this situation), and your fractional ownership percentage is handled purely with accounting; they give you your percentage of the dividends when they're paid out, and marginal additional investments increase your actual holdings of the share until you own the whole thing. If you divest, the firm sells the share of which you owned a fraction (or just holds onto it for the next guy fractionally investing in the stock; no need to pay unnecessary broker fees) and pays you that fraction of the sale price.  Another is dividend reinvestment; the company may indicate that instead of paying a cash dividend, they will pay a stock dividend, or you yourself may indicate to the broker that you want your dividends given to you as shares of stock, which the broker will acquire from the market and place in your account. Other common situations include stock splits that aren't X-for-1. Companies often aren't looking to halve their stock price by offering a two-for-one split; they may think a smaller figure like 50% or even smaller is preferable, to fine tune their stock price (and thus P/E ratio and EPS figures) similar to industry competitors or to companies with similar market capitalization. In such situations they can offer a split that's X-for-Y with X>Y, like a 3-for-2, 5-for-3 or similar. These are relatively uncommon, but they do happen; Home Depot's first stock split, in 1987, was a 3-for-2. Other ratios are rare, and MSFT has only ever been split 2-for-1. So, it's most likely that you ended up with the extra sixth of a share through dividend reinvestment or a broker policy allowing fractional-share investment. No, they do not. Stock funds and bonds funds collect income dividends in different   ways. Stock funds collect dividends  (as well as any capital gains   that are realized) from the underlying stocks  and incorporates these   into the funds’ net asset value, or daily share price. That’s why a   stock fund’s share price drops when the fund makes a distribution –   the distribution comes out of the fund’s total net assets. With bond funds, the internal accounting is different:  Dividends   accrue daily, and are then paid out to shareholders every month or   quarter.  Bond funds collect the income from the underlying bonds and   keep it in a separate internal “bucket.”  A bond fund calculates a   daily accrual rate for the shares outstanding, and shareholders only   earn income for the days they actually hold the fund.  For example, if   you buy a bond fund two days before the fund’s month-end distribution,   you would only receive two days’ worth of income that month.  On the   other hand, if you sell a fund part-way through the month, you will   still receive a partial distribution at the end of the month,   pro-rated for the days you actually held the fund. Source  Also via bogleheads: Most Vanguard bond funds accrue interest to the share holders daily.   Here is a typical statement from a prospectus: Each Fund distributes to shareholders virtually all of its net income   (interest less expenses) as well as any net capital gains realized   from the sale of its holdings. The Fund’s income dividends accrue   daily and are distributed monthly. The term accrue used in this sense   means that the income dividends are credited to your account each day,   just like interest in a savings account that accrues daily. Since the   money set aside for your dividends is both an asset of the fund and a   liability, it does not affect the calculated net asset value. When the   fund distributes the income dividends at the end of the month, the net   asset value does not change as both the assets and liabilities   decrease by exactly the same amount. [Note that if you sell all of   your bond fund shares in the middle of the month, you will receive as   proceeds the value of your shares (calculated as number of shares   times net asset value) plus a separate distribution of the accrued   income dividends.] 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. "FSEMX has an annual expense ratio of 0.1% which is very low. What that means is that each month, the FSEMX will pay itself one-twelfth of 0.1% of  the total value of all the shares owned by the shareholders in the mutual fund.  If the fund has cash on hand from its trading activities or dividends collected from companies  whose stock is owned by FSEMX or interest on bonds owned by FSEMX, the  money comes out of that, but if there is no such pot (or the pot is not large enough), then the fund manager has the authority to sell some shares of the stocks held by FSEMX so that the employees can be paid, etc. If the total of cash generated by the trading and the dividend collection in a given year is (say) 3% of the share value of all the outstanding mutual fund,  then only 2.9% will be paid out as dividend and capital gain distribution  income to the share holders, the remaining 0.1% already having been paid to FSEMX management for operating expenses.   It is important to keep in mind that expenses are always paid even if there are no profits, or even if there are losses that year so that no dividends or capital gains distributions are made.  You don't see the expenses explicitly on any statement that you receive.  If FSEMX sells shares of stocks that it holds to pay the expenses, this reduces  the share value (NAV) of the mutual fund shares that you hold.  So, if your mutual fund account ""lost"" 20% in value that year because the market was falling, and you got no dividend or capital gains distributions either, remember that only 19.9% of that loss can be blamed on the President or Congress or Wall Street or public-sector unions or your neighbor's refusal to ditch his old PC in favor of a new Mac, and the rest (0.1%) has gone to FSEMX to pay for fees you agreed to when you bought FSEMX shares. If you invest directly in FSEMX through Fidelity's web site, there is no sales charge, and you pay no expenses other than the 0.1% annual expense ratio.  There is a fee for selling FSEMX shares after owning them only for a short time since  the fund wants to discourage short-term investors. Whatever other fees finance.yahoo.com lists might be descriptive of the uses that FSEMX puts its expense ratio income to in its internal management, but are not of any importance to the prudent investor in FSEMX who will never encounter them or have to pay them." 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. If the expense ratio of the fund is 0.00% then yes.  However, if the fund has expenses of 1% then if the NAV of the fund is $10/share the expenses would cause you to see only $.002 a share and thus you'd have $.10 in total as the expenses first cut down the yield. http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/104/stupid.htm would have some data though a bit old about open-end funds vs an ETF that would be one point. Secondly, do you know that the Math on your ETF will always work out to whole numbers of shares or do you plan on using brokers that would allow fractional shares easily? This is a factor as $3,000 of an open-end fund will automatically go into fractional shares that isn't necessarily the case of an ETF where you have to specify a number of shares when you purchase as well as consider are you doing a market or limit order? These are a couple of things to keep in mind here. Lastly, what if the broker you use charges account maintenance fees for your account? In buying the mutual fund from the fund company directly, there may be a lower likelihood of having such fees. I don't know of any way to buy shares in the ETF directly without using a broker. CHN is a Closed-End Fund. CHN actually pays out three types of distributions: In the case of CHN, they appear to be paying yearly.  The most recent dividend, with exdate of 18 Dec 2014, consisted of $3.4669 of Long-term capital gains and $0.2982 cash dividend. Prior to that, the dividend with exdate of 19 Dec 2013 consisted of $2.8753 long-term capital gains and $0.4387 cash dividend. For a standard dividend yield you typically would not expect short-term and long-term capital events to be included in a yield calculation, as these events really only occur in relation to a fund rebalancing (changing its investments) and are not really due to the actual performance of the fund in any way.  Most free sites that provide dividend information do not make a distinction on the dividend type. Data source: Premium Data Full Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Premium Data/Norgate.