I've noticed a few of my stocks go up prior to the drip, like clockwork, each month. Someone or something must be trading the DRIPs. For various reasons, I've got a lot of accounts. Most of these accounts have low dollar values in them but three are significant. The low value accounts are just left to DRIP synthetically. The bigger accounts have enough income each month that it makes sense to wait out the monthly DRIP bump and buy afterward. The commission is easily earned back by the lower price.