XJO - Bear Posts only (Factors which might cause the markets to fall), page-12015

Yea I saw that when researching this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cede_and_Company

It's an interesting little rabbit hole. As far as I can tell though this stuff is just the legal mechanisms that facilitate an orderly and smooth market so it's not as big a deal to worry about.

I'm more worried about brokers that are gambling with derivatives and potentially exposing the longs as a result. Is there a broker that does not do this? Or do they take adequate precautions to "firewall" off the long positions in a legal sense?

Otherwise it just seems to me that going through these brokers results in you owning a mechanism against the price of a stock, not any actual stock being held on your behalf by the custodian for safe keeping.

Just so hard to find an actual answer on this, I jumped on livechat with a broker earlier and could not get a clear answer about this. Am I wording things wrong?