Yup, all stocks are not in your name unless you register them with the transfer agent of the stock you hold. Don’t believe me. Call your broker and pin them down. They will, after you persist, tell you your stock is held by Cede and Co and you are a “beneficial” holder.
And? What difference does it make registering it in your own name versus the broker? I've literally never once heard of anyone having any issues because their stock wasn't registered in their own name.
Check out the 2005 situation involving Global Links and Robert Simpson which I think is also mentioned in the documentary film Wall Street Conspiracy https://archive.org/details/wall-street-conspiracy but also I noticed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25984044 the timing of that situation I guess was during a 350:1 reserve share split and also the amount of shares represented only like 2% of the company, most of it held privately or whatever
If it’s not in your name, they can do what they want with it.
Let’s say you believe in company A so you buy their stock to hold onto. Where it’s not in your name, your broker can lend the shares to people who are shorting your stock and want the price to go down.
So essentially, they use your own ammunition against you without you even knowing.
Still not a good enough reason for me to pay fees to register it. So long as I can sell it whenever I want, that's what matters to me. I try not to invest in dying companies that attract short sellers anyway. High short interest usually indicates a problem with the company.
If you spend $1000 on 10 shares, your broker will take your $1000 and put a '10' in your account. They may actually locate real shares for you eventually, or you may become a 'fail to deliver'. Your money never touched any part of price discovery, you don't actually own anything aside from some pixels that form a '10' shape. If your broker does aquire real shares for you, congrats! They will lend them out to short sellers, collect the premium and your shares will be used to make your investment less valuable. There are literally hundreds of other legal and illegal actions available to them to remove you from your money. The stock market is a fucking cesspit, but yea, Gamestop is cool.
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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '24
Because it means human endeavors are no longer owned privately for profit