Dividend Channel, on 12/7/16, Regions Financial Corp, Travelers Companies Inc , and Popular Inc. will all trade ex-dividend for their respective upcoming dividends. Regions Financial Corp will pay its quarterly dividend of $0.065 on 1/3/17, Travelers Companies Inc will pay its quarterly dividend of $0.67 on 12/30/16, and Popular Inc. will pay its quarterly dividend of $0.15 on 1/2/17.

As a percentage of RF's recent stock price of $13.94, this dividend works out to approximately 0.47%, so look for shares of Regions Financial Corp to trade 0.47% lower - all else being equal - when RF shares open for trading on 12/7/16. Similarly, investors should look for TRV to open 0.58% lower in price and for BPOP to open 0.36% lower, all else being equal.

In general, dividends are not always predictable, following the ups and downs of company profits over time. Therefore, a good first due diligence step in forming an expectation of annual yield going forward, is looking at the history above, for a sense of stability over time. This can help in judging whether the most recent dividends from these companies are likely to continue. If they do continue, the current estimated yields on annualized basis would be 1.87% for Regions Financial Corp, 2.31% for Travelers Companies Inc , and 1.43% for Popular Inc..

In Monday trading, Regions Financial Corp shares are currently up about 1.5%, Travelers Companies Inc shares are up about 0.1%, and Popular Inc. shares are up about 1% on the day.

Investigating dividend yield should be the dividend investor's first task when investigating a newly screened stock. The universal practice among finance sites and brokers is to present a dividend yield number using whatever dividend amount the stock has recently paid. This can cause a number of situations dividend investors need to look out for, where the high yield presented is actually a trap rather than an opportunity. This article talks about some of those common situations.