etf_id and an ex-dividend date. Distributions are stored as raw declared events and are never folded into any NAV.
Plan: Fund · Credits: 1 per call
What You Can Use ETF Distributions For
Compute a fund’s trailing distribution yield from what it actually paid. Reconcile the gap between ETF NAV and ETF Total Return. Anticipate the NAV step-down on an upcoming ex date. Separate income distributions from capital-gain distributions when estimating an investor’s tax position.ETF Distributions Coverage
Distribution events are collected for funds across the ETF registry. The ETF profile returns the newest twelve events inline; the full declared history is available through the history endpoint withseries=distributions.
Coverage bounds are measured on the way out — read the coverage block on the response for the fund you queried.
Key ETF Distribution Fields
ex_date is the ex-dividend date, the date the distribution detaches from the share. amount_per_share is the amount as declared, in the fund’s currency. amount_per_share_split_adjusted restates that amount on today’s share count so a long history is comparable across splits.
declaration_date, record_date and pay_date are the other three dates the fund announced. frequency describes the fund’s declared distribution schedule. distribution_type classifies the payment.
What the ETF Distribution Type Means
distribution_type carries the classification only when the fund’s own notice stated one. A value of unclassified means the notice did not say whether the payment was income or capital gain — it is a record of what the fund disclosed, not a failure of extraction, and it should not be assumed to be ordinary income. In practice most declared events are unclassified, because most distribution notices do not break the payment down; treat the type as a bonus where present, never as a partition of the history.
Distributions Are Never Folded Into NAV
The ETF NAV series is price-basis: on an ex date, NAV simply steps down by the distribution and the cash is never reinvested there. The ETF Total Return series is the one that folds distributions back in. Keeping the three apart — raw declared events here, price-basis NAV, and a separate total-return series — is what makes each of them reconcilable against the other two. A distribution can always be located as the exact gap between the NAV step and the total-return series on its ex date.ETF Distribution Date Convention
Four dates appear on a distribution and they are not interchangeable.declaration_date is when the fund announced it. ex_date is when the shares begin trading without it, and it is the date NAV steps down. record_date is when ownership is fixed. pay_date is when cash reaches holders.
Yield and NAV-reconciliation work keys on ex_date. Cash-flow work keys on pay_date.
ETF Distributions Sources
Distributions come from the funds’ own declared distribution notices, kept as raw events with the currency the fund declared them in. Amounts are validated against the observed ex-date NAV step, and the split-adjusted restatement uses the same adjudicated events documented on ETF Splits — so the declared basis and today’s basis are both first-class and either can be reconstructed exactly.Query ETF Distributions
Use the ETF history endpoint withseries=distributions to retrieve the full declared distribution history for one fund.
string
required
etf_id (E000011), a ticker (SPY), an ISIN, or a CUSIP.string
required
Set to
distributions for this dataset.string
Earliest ex date to return,
YYYY-MM-DD. date_lte sets the ceiling. On this series the date filters apply to ex_date.integer
default:"250"
Rows per page, between 1 and 1000. Pages run newest to oldest via
cursor.