options - Implied dividend estimation

I am looking at two different ways of estimating the expected / implied dividends from market data.

1. Dividend futures

I know that this asset class is not very liquid and might not be representative enough. However, assuming that I have prices which are good enough, how could I estimate the implied divided from the contract price?

For instance, if I have an exchange traded contract whose settlement is the sum of actual dividends paid during 2013, could I just take the current contract price and capitalize it up to the settlement date in order to obtain the implied dividend for 2013?

EDIT: Example added for illustration purposes:

On 05 july 2013, the quoted prices for Santander Dividend Futures are:

• 2013 contract; Maturity 20 Dec 2013; Price: 0.58


• 2014 contract; Maturity 19 Dec 2014; Price: 0.41


• 2015 contract; Maturity 18 Dec 2015; Price: 0.32

For simplicity assume that:

• Each contract is linked to the sum of all dividends paid during the corresponding calendar year.


• Appropriate risk free rates for each contract are: 0,1%; 0,3%; 0,5%.

If I want to estimate the total amount of implied dividends for each year, could these figures be obtained as:

$$ D_{2013}=0.58e^{(0,001*0.46)}=0.5802 $$ $$ D_{2014}=0.41e^{(0,003*1.46)}=0.4118 $$ $$ D_{2015}=0.32e^{(0,005*2.45)}=0.3240 $$ Or am I missing something?

2. Index / single-stock futures

Alternatively, if I wanted to estimate the dividend yield for a stock, what are the limitations of calculating the implied yield directly from the market prices as:

$$ F=S_0e^{(r-q)T} \; \; \; \; \; \Rightarrow \; \; \; \; \; q = \frac{rT-\ln{\frac{F}{S_0}}}{T} $$

I guess there must be certain shortcomings with this aprroach, since usually the synthetic forward is obtained through the put-call parity instead of using the futures prices.

Thanks in advance!