An Audio Series
The Transfer Desk: How Brokerage Transfers Work
The hidden machinery that moves your money between firms — the systems, the people, the companies, and the rules with real teeth. Five units on how brokerage transfers actually work — from the 1968 crisis that built the system to the five-hundred-year history behind the accounts nobody can quite explain.
Before the machine, the flood — the 1967–70 Paperwork Crisis that nearly sank Wall Street, and built the clearing system, SIPC customer protection, and the automated transfer you use today. You'll learn how securities clearing and settlement actually works: the DTC, the NSCC, “fails to deliver,” and where ACATS came from.
The Flood
How property passes at death, and the five-hundred-year fight over who controls it — you, your heirs, or the state. You'll learn what probate actually is and why an entire industry exists to route around it, how a beneficiary designation beats a will, transfer-on-death (TOD) registration, revocable versus irrevocable trusts, funding a trust, and the step-up in basis.
The Dead Hand
The quiet 40-year-old machine that moves accounts between brokerages — ACATS, the non-ACAT paper world, the controls, the edge cases, and the human who takes over where the automation ends.
The Machine That Moves Your Money
The hidden hinge of every simple brokerage transfer is one boring word: registration. Individual, joint, traditional and Roth IRAs, and UTMA/UGMA custodial accounts — and why the machine would rather reject you than guess who you are.
The Name on the Account
The two hardest kinds of transfer are the ones where the owner can't speak: inherited IRAs and business/entity accounts. The SECURE Act 10-year rule, FBO titling, and why a company has to prove who's allowed to move its money.