***The recent MF global implosion seems to have left Canadian accounts unscathed according to the Canadian Investor Protection Fund***
In light of this maybe I should only trade on the Toronto Exchange and switch my broker to a Canadian fellow.
Not sure what the implications of that statement are.
I would imagine looking for the rule-of-law country might be a tough one as corruption appears everywhere. Here in the States, even though USAA is via military membership where I use it for my banking and insurance needs. I also use their brokerage services, which as I understand it, anyone can sign up for. They are highly rated overall. You might give them a call for your brokerage services. If they go belly up then no where is safe.
Most traded companies have a ‘transfer agent’ like
http://www.computershare.com/us/Pages/default.aspx
And one of their services reads something like this:
“Complete transfer processing services for both certificated and Direct Registration shares.”
‘Direct’ means electronic registration of share in your name. Once in your name, most of the time, you can then request paper certificate(s) of your stocks sent to you to have and hold.
The reason to hold your shares in electronic or certificate form is to get them out of the control of your broker which holds your stocks in ‘street name’ which means ‘not in your name.’
The drawback is that if you want to trade your shares, you have to usually send them back to a broker to sell them but that is changing as some ‘transfer agents’ will do the sells for you if held there in electronic form.