Investing - Theory, News & General • Re: Decrease in 2026 dividends - Total International stock

Distributions from the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund are notoriously volatile and difficult to forecast. Like you, I've noticed the huge % drop in distributions this year compared to last year. As you'll notice, the distribution in Q4 of last year was quite large. My guess is that we're sort of paying for that this year with a lower distribution. I'm sure there are other factors at work, company specific (volatile), currency, etc. I've tried researching this and couldn't come up with anything particularly helpful for forecasting. (The situation with 500/TSM is much easier - typically 5%-ish annual growth.)

I think annual figures are most instructive and I'll give you my best guess for Q4 2026. Here are the annual distributions from Total International (Admiral) and % change from PY:

2022 0.848 -19%
2023 0.9995 +18%
2024 1.0537 +5%
2025 1.2753 +21%

YTD 2026 (Q1-Q3) distributions are 0.3208, down 41% from the same YTD period last year!

I'm guessing 0.98 for full year 2026, down 23% from 2025, which implies a 0.66 distribution in December (down 10% from the big 0.73 distribution in 2025 Q4). Total SWAG! It will be interesting to see how wrong I am in December. Good luck!

Blackbird

Statistics: Posted by blackbird — Sun Sep 20, 2026 8:12 pm