What is ‘Cage’
“Cage” is a slang term used to describe the department of a brokerage firm that receives and distributes physical securities. To ensure that security ownership standards are maintained, brokerages keep cages within their offices to ensure that physical issues are secured. Stock and bond certificates are viewed as a stored value of money; if certificates are stolen or lost, individuals can stand to gain from the sale or redemption of these certificates.
Explaining ‘Cage’
Investors owning stocks typically do not hold physical stock certificates. Most stocks are held in the street name of the broker rather than each individual investor. When an investor purchases stocks, they remain registered in the issuer’s books as belonging to the brokerage firm. The brokerage firm’s records list the investor as the actual owner. The stock is held in book-entry form, or electronic record.
History of Stock Certificates
The financial industry has been reducing the number of physical certificates for many decades. Before technology, Wall Street utilized messengers for transporting physical stock certificates to and from the Financial District in Manhattan. By the late 1960s, the high volume of stock certificates and paperwork overwhelmed brokerage firms’ cages. Trades were not completed in a timely manner, forcing many firms to close. During the Paperwork Crisis, as the event was called, thieves stole over $400 million in securities from 1969 to 1970. The losses encouraged the industry to utilize technology-driven solutions such as street-name registration for safer, easier trading.
Advantages of Street Name Registration
By keeping track of stock ownership electronically rather than through physical stock certificates, stock shares trade faster. Investors retain all rights and benefits as shareholders without the burden of keeping a physical stock certificate safe from loss or theft.
Further Reading
- Europe's ordoliberal iron cage: critical political economy, the euro area crisis and its management – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Shared service centres and the role of the finance function: Advancing the Iron Cage? – www.ingentaconnect.com [PDF]
- Production parameters and economics of small-scale tilapia cage aquaculture in the Volta Lake, Ghana – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Productivity and Economics of Nile Tilapia – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- More Money for More Opportunity: Financial Support of Community College Systems. – eric.ed.gov [PDF]
- An interpretation of Max Weber's theory of law: metaphysics, economics, and the iron cage of constitutional law – www.cambridge.org [PDF]
- Analyzing the variations in cost-efficiency of marine cage lobster aquaculture in Vietnam: A two-stage bootstrap DEA approach – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- Diseases of cage and aviary birds. – www.cabdirect.org [PDF]
