PFOF is awesome. It keeps your commissions down and you are put into a bucket of dumb traders. If you are a reasonably smart trader this provides liquidity to you that you wouldn’t have. Trading against people who think you are smart, when you are actually smart, is really hard.
Larry Fink got hauled in and had his hand slapped after the little ESG virtue signal charade horribly underperformed for a few years. He's moving in the other direction now.
I think the key is what happens to Depository Trust Corp (DTC). The rest is camouflage. Trillions (literally) of $$$ of securities are held in a warehouse in Queens, NY. They are held in "beneficial form", aka "Street name" Ever looked at the back of a stock certificate? "Charles Schwab for the benefit of . . . me". blah, blah. That works until it doesn't. Like Klaus Schwab famously said: "You will have nothing and be happy." How are they going to execute that? Hmmm ... Thieves come in all shapes and sizes.
Uhhh DTC is an electronic depository, has multiple locations with HQ now in Jersey City, but likely most data (i.e. securities) are "stored" in ..... the cloud. Warehouses are so last century, come on Ser 9.
The problem is ... switching from the old paradigm (paper certs) to the new paradigm (electronic) book entry positions. It was seamless. Many people just went along with the change (it's progress, you idiot). they didn't understand the legal danger. Many still don't, even though Bernie Madoff is dead and buried many years now.
We have a paranoid amongst us, eh. But not to worry. I've been told they were moving their data over to blockchain. So there.
I was always kind of perplexed with how stock certificates work (sell, assign to ...), so there is a guy from a securities background telling people that they can lose their securities (at the broker, in Street Name). I think the interview was by Chris Martensen (Peak Prosperity). I guess the nefarious theory has to do with large multiple bankruptcies, where debt holder are legally transformed into equity holders (your equities). And I have seen something like that before, on a small scale. We have some really crazy stuff going on now (current POTUS trying to throw his current opponent in jail), so it's hard to dismiss anything as impossible.
well first current potus isn’t doing anything. The past potus is being charged and tried for crimes he committed. second, if a broker goes bankrupt, securities held in street name become assets against the creditors. As a depositor you become a creditor. However, none of this becomes a practical consideration because the depositor base is really valuable so they become whole.
Someone needs a mental diet. "You will have nothing an be happy" is a famous misquote taken out of context. The concept came from a scenario planning methodology workshop and the work of Ida Auken, a member of Danish Parliament titled: "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better." It was a forecast based on a set of variables participants were given - unfortunately much of the content that could provide better context are lost due to link rot.