Share Dividends History

Question: big discrepancy in stock price history?

take a look at TRP TransCanada Corporation (NYSE):

On the Yahoo chart, price per share in Jan 1998 was about $12:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TRP#chart1:symbol=trp;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

But on the Google chart, the price per share in Jan 1998 was about $22.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=TRP

That’s a large difference.

There was a $7.237 dividend in July 1998. Could that be related?
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=TRP&a=11&b=30&c=1987&d=11&e=25&f=1999&g=m

Answer: I don’t know what’s going on, but Big Charts (http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=trp&sid=0&o_symb=trp&freq=2&time=20) agrees with Google, not Yahoo. And none of the other services lists a $7.237 dividend at that point.

Anyway, that’s a pretty weird dividend for a company that normally only sends out $0.30 quarterly, wouldn’t you say?

If you’re really curious, you could dig back into TRP’s yearly reports or its SEC filings. If not, I’d say go with Google and Big Charts and ignore kooky Yahoo.

And congrats if you bought the stock in 2000. It’s nearly quadrupled in value in the last eight years.

How to Begin with Investing and Trading (Series): A Traders History