Do Not Reduce order: Interesting, the Ask for tomorrow is $2.05, but the bid is only $1.01. Previous days the pre-opening ask/bid has been around $2.05/$1.95. Since the bid is so much lower than the normal $1.95, it could be that people more familiar than me with special dividends, think that it is going to open lower Wednesday. The company stated that the payable shareholders of record will be Sept 12. The stock fell on what would be the normal ex-dividend date, Sept 15. I don't know the opening price that day, but it ended down only .25 which is a lot less than .70. But even though the company said that shareholders of record will be Sept 12, it is the stock exchange that officially determines the ex-dividend date, and for a 25% dividend, or higher, this is the day after the payable date, which was Tuesday, Sept 30. So the ex-dividend date would Wednesday, Oct 1st. MSN closed at $1.98, so that may mean that at the start of trading it will be listed as $1.28. But maybe not. I found one reference that said that a company can arrange for the stock price not to be lowered by the amount of the dividend, although it said that this was very rare. Since the stock closed at $1.98 and the Ask is $2.05, that means that people want a price at least 7 cents higher than the close. Since only a few hundred shares may be offered at this price, I added an additional 5 cents, which would normally be $2.10, but the exchange automatically drops the ask/bid by the price of the dividend: $0.70, so the Ask would be $1.40, not $2.10. I put in a bid of $1.40 BUT normally the exchange would also lower this by $0.70. To prevent that from happening, I added DNR to the order (Do Not Reduce). If the stock doesn't open lower, I will cancel my order. I'm happy with the $2.00 price I paid for my present shares. Just thought that I would try to get some for $1.40.
