Automated Customer Account Transfer Service - ACATS

  

After you make your first billion or so, you’ll probably have lots of different types of assets (stocks, bonds, hedge funds, weird exotic pets) and you’ll work with different banks and brokerage firms as you juggle all that stuff. Each time you want to transfer an asset from one bank or brokerage company to another, there’s lots of paperwork to fill out (ah, the problems of the rich).

To help you with that, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) created ACAT, a system that allows for easier transfer of assets between accounts and financial institutions. Hopefully, the relative ease of the system will give you more time to actually spend all that dough...like to go lunching in Bora Bora or diamond tossing in Ibiza.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are the NASDAQ and NYSE?74 Views

00:00

Finance a la Shmoop. What are the NASDAQ and the NYSE? Nasdaq, yeah it stands for

00:09

National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation-systems. And [NASDAQ defined]

00:13

yeah, it feels like they got cheated out of an S in there somewhere, like NASDAQ'S.

00:17

That's what happens when life's on a budget. So NASDAQ is an electronic

00:22

version of the original wall, as in Street, Wall Street, yah that. Where

00:26

well-dressed folks would come with cash in hand scream out a stock and a price [stock market in 1900s]

00:30

and then trade shares. They would trade for whatever was trending at the time. Like

00:34

eyeball massagers, or wooden swimsuits, or motorised surfboards, all real things

00:39

by the way. NASDAQ is the much more modern version of its predecessor NYSE.

00:48

Is anything but nice when you lose money there. NYSE stands for New York

00:50

Stock Exchange and it too was an outgrowth of the well-dressed folks at

00:54

the wall. There are two key structural differences in the two trading systems,

00:57

the NYSE is an actual physical place, has a physical location, address, etc. and this [NYSE Building]

01:04

is what it looks like. NASDAQ is really a concept, a religion, a

01:09

network, it's not really a place. At least not a geographic place. The other big

01:14

difference is the manner in which shares are traded. The NYSE is an auction-based

01:18

system, one individual is a buyer of AMZN at $983.25, he screams electronically

01:24

that number and then buys from whoever is willing to sell at that price.

01:27

Individuals buy from individuals. That's an auction market. But NASDAQ is a

01:32

dealer market, that is somebody deals in the stock. They go out into the market[online stock market]

01:38

and buy say a million shares of whatever.com that was bought in the market

01:41

conveniently for exactly ten bucks even. That dealer now makes a market in that

01:46

stock, ie the dealer is kind of you know, their own individual market. And she

01:50

moves with the market to manage the spread in the trades. Like she might have

01:54

a narrow spread, where she's a buyer of the stock at $10.02 and a seller of the

01:59

stock at $10.07 a share. Or it's a really wild volatile stock, on a wild and [man and woman on rollercoaster]

02:04

volatile day, she might be a buyer only at $9.90 and a seller at $10.30, making 40

02:09

cents a share trade. Well you could do the fancy math that if she

02:13

keeps her inventory steady at a million shares and trades a million shares that

02:17

day. Well with that spread she makes 40 cents times a million or 400 grand for

02:21

the day's efforts. However after staring at a screen all day she's gonna have to

02:24

spend at least some of that money on eye care. [woman in office]

02:26

Thank goodness for those eyeball massagers.

Up Next

Finance: What is the SEC?
28 Views

What's the SEC? Easy. Seals Eating Candy. Or maybe Silly Elephants Canoodling? We can never remember. Guess it's time to watch this video and refre...

Finance: What is NASD?
4 Views

NASD is the National Association of Securities Dealers, a self-regulating organization that was ultimately replaced by FINRA.

Finance: What are Securities?
39 Views

What are securities? Using the word securities is just a fancy way to say investments, for the most part. These particular investments include stoc...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)