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Record Date
Earnings Season
The record date is the date a company uses to determine which shareholders receive a dividend: everyone on the company's books as a shareholder that day gets paid.
The board sets it when declaring the dividend, and payment usually follows days or weeks later. With T+1 settlement in the US, buying on the record date itself is too late because the trade settles the next business day, so for investors the date that matters is the ex-dividend date.
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