Remember DTC, the little known 20 trillion dollar company that holds most stocks in the world in the name of its subsidiary "Cede & Co"? Well, this fellow just found out about them when he was trying to locate $600 worth of stocks he thought he owned, after he was told that they had been transferred to Cede & Co. And he actually called them up, trying to get some answers. Without very much luck, as he's just an individual, rather than a "participant". Anyway, he continues looking for more information on the net. And finds good things, like this letter concerning a group of stock brokers and stock transfer companies who tried to withdraw from their contract with DTC,, and found out that they couldn't. DTC is a monopoly. And apparently they run it a bit like a black box, where even brokerage houses can't really learn all the details about what happened with their stocks. There are irregularities like stocks being oversold, meaning that more are being offered than all the actually outstanding shares of the given companies.