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I started doing dividend re-investment and as my spouse's brokerage account was at a different brokerage, so I noticed the different price for same ETF e.g. QQQ.

One of the brokerage gave reinvestment price at $338.87 and the other one gave $339.58804 per share.

It seems minute difference, but want to know what should be the crystal clear price as I guess these new shares might be issued by the issuer, so all brokerage should give same price. Is there any rule?

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    Is there something that would lead you to think any of these shares were not purchased on the open market?
    – quid
    May 5, 2021 at 5:57
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    Did they reinvest at the same time? The difference is 0.3%, such a change often happens within a few minutes on the stock market
    – Manziel
    May 5, 2021 at 6:41

2 Answers 2

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No, when you buy ETF shares you buy from some other holder on the market not from the issuer, and the same when the broker buys to reinvest a distribution (but they do a bulk transaction for all their clients which is more efficient). That's the difference between an ETF and a traditional fund; see Do ETFs move on their own? Or only on aggregate from the individual holdings? and more links in my comment there. Since each broker does their own purchase, from different sellers, and possibly with different costs, they are extremely likely to get slightly different prices.

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If this was a non-ETF fund then the transaction would have taken place at the end of the day. That would mean that all re-investment transactions that day would take place at the same price.

With an ETF the price could change every second of the trading day. Unless they took place at the same second the price could be different. On a particularly volatile day the delta within a trading day could be a percent or even more.

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