Many people do not know that the Dow Jones Industrial Index does not reflect the smaller cash dividends that come into that portfolio. They do keep track of larger special dividends, but for anything that would affect the index by less than five points, it is not reflected in the Dow. They track a separate "total return" portfolio to keep track of their index's returns that might accrue if one included every-day smaller cash dividends. In a way, I sort of like this approach to matters. It sort of reflects what some of us do as investors: we like to invest in all manner of stocks including income-generating ones, but we often put aside the issue of any additional cash that may come into the account. It is almost like an added bonus of "found money".
For our own fuel-cell index portfolio, my original intention was to track total return, as the portfolio is intended to be a sort of experiment in how one would have done had one made these investment decisions. But I realized after time that it is hard to track