Street Name (Securities)
Holding securities 'in street name' means that a broker-dealer or custodian is the registered legal owner of the shares on the company's transfer agent records, while the investor is the beneficial owner — the arrangement used for virtually all securities held in brokerage accounts.
Street name ownership is the standard arrangement for virtually every retail and institutional investor who holds securities through a brokerage account, and understanding it clarifies important practical questions about shareholder rights, voting, and custody. The term itself derives from the historic use of 'The Street' to refer to Wall Street and financial markets — securities held by firms 'on the street' rather than directly by investors.
In a street name arrangement, the transfer agent's books show the broker-dealer (or its nominee, often DTC's nominee 'Cede & Co.') as the registered holder of shares. The broker-dealer in turn maintains internal records tracking which client beneficially owns which shares. The investor has all the economic rights of ownership — they receive dividends, bear the price risk of the shares, can direct the broker to sell — but they are not a shareholder of record in the company's own records.
The practical consequence is that most investors have never appeared directly on a company's transfer agent records and never will. If the company wants to communicate with shareholders, it sends materials to the broker-dealers, who are responsible for distributing them to beneficial owners. Proxy voting works through a similar chain: the company sends proxy materials to DTC, which distributes them to participating broker-dealers, which distribute them to beneficial owner clients through platforms like Broadridge.
The advantages of street name holding are substantial: it eliminates the need for physical certificates, enables rapid electronic settlement through DTC, simplifies the transfer of shares between buyers and sellers, and provides SIPC protection for securities held at the broker. The disadvantages are that investors cannot vote directly at company meetings without going through the broker's voting system, and exercising certain shareholder rights (like attending annual meetings as a shareholder of record, or participating in certain direct purchase plans) may require first converting to registered form.
Investors who want to hold shares in registered form directly — bypassing street name — can use the Direct Registration System (DRS), transferring shares from their broker to a transfer agent account in their own name. The GameStop community popularized DRS as a mechanism to 'lock' shares and potentially squeeze short sellers by removing shares from the DTCC-mediated lending pool, though the practical impact of retail DRS activity on market dynamics remains debated.