Quote:
Originally Posted by manaboutown
Anyway after reading this book to sleep at night I feel I need to continue to keep my securities distributed among several wirehouses and wonder if others feel the same.
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Objectively, the probability of Schwab, a large NYSE listed firm, failing to make its investment account holders whole is very remote.
First, in the hierarchy of who suffers losses, stockholders loose first. Investment account holders like you loose only after stockholders.
Second, practically speaking, the U.S. government and Federal Reserve would not let the account holders loose for policy reasons because Schwab’s failure would cause a global financial crisis like we have never seen.
Third, Schwab has about $512 billion in assets as of June 30, 2023 (latest data available) and the market value of its common stock today is about $110 billion. Of the $512 billion in assets, $73 billion is cash and equivalents and $295 billion are in investments. Those investments would need to fall in value by roughly 1/3 (very unlikely) to take out the stockholders first and then get to account holders.
Psychologically, if you feel much better diversifying your assets across multiple financial institutions, then do it. If you can’t sleep at night and excessively worry over having your investments in one place, diversify.