Been working on a dividend research tool for the past year and wanted to share some of the technical decisions and tradeoffs in case anyone's building something similar or just curious how these things work.
The problem I was trying to solve:
Traditional stock screeners are powerful but have a learning curve. You need to know what payout ratio < 60% means before you can filter for it. I wanted something where you could just type "find safe dividend stocks with 4%+ yield" and get results.
Architecture (simplified):
1. Natural language -> structured query: User types a question, AI parses intent and extracts filters (yield range, sector, dividend history, etc.)
2. Query execution: Run against a database of 500 dividend stocks with 50+ metrics per stock (yield, payout ratio, consecutive years of increases, ex-dividend dates, etc.)
3. Response generation: Format results conversationally, explain why stocks matched
What actually worked:
* Dividend Aristocrats/Kings classification - People love filtering by these. Having clear labels for 25+ and 50+ year dividend increasers is super useful.
* Ex-dividend date tracking - Surprisingly popular. People want to know "what's paying dividends this month?"
* Payout ratio as a risk indicator - Simple but effective. >80% payout ratio is a red flag most of the time.
* Dividend cut predictions: This is hard. We built a risk score based on payout ratio, debt levels, earnings trends, etc. It catches obvious red flags but isn't magic. Had a few stocks flagged as risky that actually cut dividends 6 months later (AT&T, Intel), but still needs a bit of fine tuning (improving the process :D ).
What didn't work / tradeoffs:
* Real-time data: Too expensive for a side project. We update daily, which is fine for dividend research (dividends don't change every minute) but wouldn't work for day trading.
* Brokerage integration: Decided against it. Regulatory nightmare and honestly, most people just want research tools. They'll probably just execute trades in their existing broker.
Happy to answer questions about the technical side or dividend investing in general. Not trying to sell anything here, just thought the architecture decisions might be useful for anyone building financial tools.