I would like to see companies that pay dividends whether a stock or Limited Partnership have a fix basis on how it is calculated and time to pay the dividend. Why should a company go Ex-Div and have a month to pay the dividend? Also, why is it not a standard as to how the dividend is calculated when being reinvested. e.g., AT&T goes Ex-Div in the first few days of the month it is declared, but it doesn't pay the dividend until the first day of the following month. Why? Energy Transfer is a Limited Partnership. It goes Ex-Div in the 2nd Tuesday of the month declared, but doesn't pay it for two weeks, and on top of that, it is calculated based on the 5 trading days (M-F) of the week before it is paid. If you follow that, the stock almost without exception drops almost twice as much as the dividend to be paid the week after the dividend is declared. That give ET a chance to buy all the shares they need during that drop, then the week it is being calculated, the share price is inflated, to the point where the stock goes up and the effect is they didn't have to pay anything for the new allocated shares. Doesn't that seem like stock manipulation? To make dividend fair to the share holder, all dividends should be paid within a week of declaration. Not allowing any company time to offset the payments with stock manipulations. Companies know that are going to pay it, so adjust the date paid to be within week of declaration. Plain and simple, and fair to all shareholders. Be fair to the little investor, we need those dividends!