Thanks for the response casey. I obviously don't understand how the paper work is done in, for instance, the case I mentioned of my own relationship with my broker. The broker would credit my account with $300K worth of shares but, on the other side of the broker's books, no stock would ever show up to be credited to the broker's account? It seems to me that the broker (owned by a large bank in my case) would have a problem if I chose to sell my shares a few days later, or at any future time for that matter. My broker would presumably be responsible to the buyer of my interest to deliver the stock, but it doesn't exist? I don't want to waste everyone's time here but this is an interesting situation from my perspective. At some point, it seems to me, the "phantom" shares have to materialize and my broker would have a vested interest in forcing that to happen.

Thanks again.