One time cash distributions per calendar year, and their share of all payouts
Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-08-22, from When Special Dividends Adjust Options.
| year | one_time_payouts | one_time_pct |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1506 | 5.36 |
| 2018 | 1445 | 4.93 |
| 2019 | 1300 | 4.32 |
| 2020 | 844 | 2.96 |
| 2021 | 1349 | 4.52 |
| 2022 | 1257 | 3.96 |
| 2023 | 1226 | 3.7 |
| 2024 | 1151 | 3.26 |
| 2025 | 1293 | 3.18 |
- Rows × columns
- 9 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
year |
text | 9 distinct values (2017, 2018, 2019…) | |
one_time_payouts |
number | 844 to 1,506 | |
one_time_pct |
number | 2.96 to 5.36 | percent |
Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.
the exact SQL behind every number
SELECT
toString(toYear(ex_dividend_date)) AS year,
countIf(frequency = 0) AS one_time_payouts,
round(100 * countIf(frequency = 0) / count(), 2) AS one_time_pct
FROM
(
SELECT
ticker,
ex_dividend_date,
frequency,
max(cash_amount) AS cash_amt
FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
WHERE currency = 'USD'
AND cash_amount > 0
AND ex_dividend_date >= '2017-01-01'
AND ex_dividend_date < toStartOfYear(today())
GROUP BY ticker, ex_dividend_date, frequency
)
GROUP BY year
ORDER BY year
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