A script to explore stock trading strategies involving dividend paying stocks
The online brokerage RobinHood.com allows commission free trading. This got me thinking about whether it woiuld be profitable to trade stocks by buying on the last day of the month that allow you to collect the dividend and sell on the following day. In theory, this breaks even since the stock opens the following day with the price reduced by the amount of the dividend. However, in practice, the price can moved during that day even to the point of making up that loss and so returning a small profit.
The name SphericalDiv is based on the humorous concept of a spherical cow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow