Confirming that stocks are listed under my name
"The answer to your question is ""no"". Unless you specifically ask to receive paper share certificates, then brokers will hold your shares with a custodian company in the broker's own nominee account.  If you are able to receive paper certificates, then the registrar of the company whose shares you own will have a record of your name, however this is exceptionally rare these days.  Using a stockbroker means that your shares will be held in the broker's nominee account. A nominee company is a custodian charged with the safekeeping of investors’ securities. It should be a separate entity from the broker itself. In essence, the nominee is the legal owner of the securities, while you retain actual ownership as the beneficiary. Your broker can move and sell the securities on your behalf – and gets to handle all the lovely paperwork – but the assets still belong to you. They can’t be claimed by the broker’s creditors if things get messy. The main reason for this kind of set-up is cost, and this is why brokers are able to offer relatively low dealing costs to their clients. You can, if you wish, ask your broker for an account that deals with paper share certificates. However, few brokers will offer such an account and it will mean that you incur much higher dealing costs and may mean that you cannot sell you shares without first submitting the paper certificates back to your stock broker.   Note that the stock exchange plays no role in recording ownership.  Nor does your broker's account with the clearing house." Street name is not what you think it is in the question.  The broker is the owner in street name.  There is no external secondary owner information.   I don't know if there is available independent verification, but if the broker is in the US and they go out of business suddenly, you can make a claim to the SIPC.
I'll try just about anything generic.  I haven't had the best luck with off-brand coffee, though. One thing to check side-by-side is the ingredient list.  My wife is sensitive to some ingredients so that plays into what we buy.  Sometimes the generic brand has ingredients that she can have, but the name brand doesn't. "Most markets around the world have been downtrending for the last 6 to 10 months. The definition of a downtrend is lower lows and lower highs, and until you get a higher low and confirmation with a higher high the downtrend will continue. If you look at the weekly charts of most indexes you can determine the longer term trend. If you are more concerned with the medium term trend then you could look at the daily charts. So if your objective is to try and buy individual stocks and try to make some medium to short term profits from them I would start by first looking at the daily charts of the index your stock belongs to. Only buy when the intermediate trend of the market is moving up (higher highs and higher lows).  You can do some brief analysis on the stocks your interested in buying, and two things I would add to the short list in your question would be to check if earnings are increasing year after year. The second thing to look at would be to check if the earnings yield is greater than the dividend yield, that way you know that dividends are being paid out from current earnings and not from previous earning or from borrowings. You could then check the daily charts of these individual stocks and make sure they are uptrending also. Buy uptrending stocks in an uptrending market. Before you buy anything write up a trading plan and develop your trading rules. For example if price breaks through the resistance line of a previous high you will buy at the open of the next day. Have your money management and risk management rules in place and stick to your plan. You can also do some backtesting or paper trading to check the validity of your strategy. A good book to read on money and risk management is - ""Trade your way to Financial Freedom"" by Van Tharp. Your aim should not be to get a winner on every trade but to let your winners run and keep your losses small." "Depending on how the check was made out, you may be able to file a DBA (""doing business as""), which would give you the business name locally.  Then open an account under that name and deposit the check. Or simply go back to the customer and say ""hey, I don't have yhe company bak account open yet; could I exchange this check for one made out to me personally?"" That's how I've been handling hobby income under a company name. (I really do ned to file that DBA!)" I prefer to use a Foreign Exchange transfer service.  You will get a good exchange rate (better than from Paypal or from your bank) and it is possible to set it up with no transfer fees on both ends.  You can use an ACH transfer from your US bank account to the FX's bank account and then a SEPA transfer in Europe to get the funds into your bank account.  Transfers can also go in the opposite direction (Europe to USA). I've used XE's service (www.xe.com) and US Forex's service (www.usforex.com).  Transferwise (www.transferwise.com) is another popular service. US Forex's service calls you to confirm each transfer.  They also charge a $5 fee on transfers under $1000. XE's service is more convenient: they do not charge fees for small transfers and do not call you to confirm the tramsfer.  However, they will not let you set up a free ACH transfer from US bank accounts if you set up your XE account outside the US. In both cases, the transfer takes a few business days to complete. EDIT: In my recent (Summer 2015) experience, US Forex has offered slightly better rates than XE.  I've also checked out Transferwise, and for transfers from the US it seems to be a bit of a gimmick with a fee added late in the process.  For reference, I just got quotes from the three sites for converting 5000 USD to EUR: "There is one other factor that I haven't seen mentioned here.  It's easy to assume that if you buy a stock, then someone else (another stock owner) must have sold it to you.  This is not true however, because there are people called ""market makers"" whose basic job is to always be available to buy shares from those who wish to sell, and sell shares to those who wish to buy.  They could be selling you shares they just bought from someone else, but they also could simply be issuing shares from the company itself, that have never been bought before. This is a super oversimplified explanation, but hopefully it illustrates my point." Edgar Online is the SEC's reporting repository where public companies post their forms, these forms contain financial data Stock screeners allow you to compare many companies based on many financial metrics. Many sites have them, Google Finance has one with a decent amount of utility "Shares do not themselves carry any identity. Official shareholders are kept at the registrar.  In the UK, this may be kept up to date and publicly accessible.  In the US, it is not, but this doesn't matter because most shares are held ""in street name"". For a fully detailed history, one would need access to all exchange records, brokerage records, and any trades transacted off exchange. These records are almost totally unavailable." If you're researching a publicly traded company in the USA, you can search the company filings with the SEC. Clicking 'Filings' should take you here.