Hi – I agree, I’ve never experienced a big dividend adjustment like this before (positive or negative). On reflection it makes sense though as the HS is a large value index so just taking an average rough 3% div yield on large cap indices like Dow, FTSE etc comes to around 750 pts on the HS index  and looking at the 2016 dividends it came to a total of 803 pts so sounds about right.

To be honest, I usually do look out for the adjustments coming up on short positions (on longs it’s less of an issue as you get credited) but it’s only for the main indices (FTSE, Dow, CAC etc), I totally forgot to monitor this. In the past HS positions I think we’ve been lucky that any short positions were either not held for long and/or not run through large dividend adjustment periods – our luck ran out this time unfortunately. I looked around to see if there any more adjustments due and haven’t yet found a site that gives you upcoming dividend adjustments on this index (if any member knows of one please post here) but I’ve looked up the history based on last few years and it follows roughly the same pattern/adjustment/trend each year. So based on May  2016 (see attached), there were around 140pts of dividends in May with another 30 due by the end of this week and 60 to come in the next 2 weeks. Worth considering in respect of the positions whether or not to close early if there is no movement in the right direction overnight tonight. That’s the thing about the markets, always something new to learn every day 🙂

https://markets.ft.com/data/indices/tearsheet/historical?s=HSIDPI:HKG

HS-Divs.jpg HS-Divs-17.jpg

I removed the shorts of HS and backtested 2000 units. For some reason it takes as much losses as with the shorts on, but less profit. In other words, it doesn’t take the same positions with them off.

Namnlös.jpg