Street name
Shares held in street name are registered in the name of a brokerage firm, or the clearing organization it uses, rather than in the name of the who owns them. The brokerage keeps its own internal records showing which customer is the beneficial owner of each position, even though the company's own records show the as the registered holder.
Holding shares in street name is the default and overwhelmingly common arrangement for retail today, because it makes buying, selling, and settling trades much faster and simpler than if every transaction required updating the company's own registry directly. , statements, and voting materials are still passed through to the actual beneficial owner by the , even though the company technically only knows the as the of record.
The main tradeoff investors sometimes encounter is that certain actions can be a little more involved when shares are held in street name rather than registered directly in the investor's own name, such as some types of voting or participating in a company's direct purchase plan, both of which may require going through the rather than dealing with the company directly. For the vast majority of investors, though, holding shares in street name has no meaningful downside and is simply how modern work.