@crash has recently reported on Schwab's approach to the subject.
I thought we should have a dedicated thread to get to the bottom of this subject.
Please report discrepancies you notice in how the brokerages are handling open market purchase reinvestments. I will try to summarize the thread at the end and see if there is a systemic issue that needs to be alerted to the SEC.
@crash, I could not locate your post(s) on the subject. Do you mind either copying them into this thread or directing me to your posts so I can bring them here?
Comments
The previous posting, from my "Charles Schlob" thread:
Tried again on Schwab's chat. I was directed away from chat to TALK on the phone to CRSS. (Alphabet soup junk-ola.) They told me that in this particular case, (because ET is an LP) the dividend would be posted rather quickly. (It was.) But reinvested shares would ALSO show up later on the same day --- unlike most situations. Most times, reinvested shares are purchased the FOLLOWING day.
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(Adding this:) It's still not clear to me whether the automatically reinvested shares were bought later, on the same day as the dividend was posted, or on the next day. Over on the Stocktwits website, I've had a back-and-forth with someone else who tells me this: "The DRIP price was $15.79.....the reinvestment price was open market purchase on Monday (same day as the original posting of the dividend, then) at noon for 16.40." I don't quite understand that.
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I got run-around "explanations" on the phone. "Sometimes, a weighted average price is what you'll see." So I was told at one point. And of course, she made a point to say "it's in the contract with our clients." As usual, there's never a direct answer to a direct question. ... No satisfaction. The solution is simply not to trust uncle Chucky with this task, and to accept dividends as cash, and then reinvest the money at the moment and price-point of my own choosing. ...Frikkin' GAMES. Thank you, @BaluBalu