When you invest in a stock do you get a certificate? If that's true then?

Question

how about if you are buying and selling various stocks alld ay? do you get a certificate in the mail a week later for a stock that has been long gone because you sold it?

(Apparently people keep their stock certificates in a lock box or something ? )

If there is a natural disaster or a fire should you grab your stock certificate papers and run out ofthe house with them?

Answer 1

Yes if you buy a stock, you can get a certificate delivered to you.   No you will not get a stock certificate if you have sold it. you don't own it, you don't get it.

If you sell a stock, you must deliver that stock to the brokerage firm so they can deliver it to the buyer

Most people let the brokerage firm hold their stock rather than get a physical certificate.  Brokers hold such stock in depositories.

If you have a physical certificate that gets lost, or destroyed. you must have it replaced if you intend to sell some time in the future.   And there is cost involved in getting a replace certificate, (Usually 5% of the market value of the stock)

Answer 2

These days shares are dematerialized, and are kept in D'mat account in electronic mode so there is no need for the company to send you share certificate. There are people who buy and sell thousand or share of various companies on day to day basis so it is useless to send them share certificates. The only proff of your holding of share is your D'mat account. Physical certificates are outdated now due to loss from fire, theft, etc. If you need a certificate you can ask your depository to re materialize the shares in your holding. Keeping your shares in D'mat account is safe and you don't need to worry about your stocks certificate etc...  

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Answer 3

No, the days of paper certificates are long over although you can buy certain certificates to hang on your wall for instance and companies that used paper certificates and no longer use them still have to honor them.

Generally stock certificates are kept in safe deposit boxes, but I don't know how well safe deposit boxes stand up to major flooding for instance.

Answer 4

you can request a paper certificate if you like, but 99.9% of people don't bother.

your brokerage house will store physical certificates for you (usually in a huge vault inside a mountain).  there really isn't any need for actual physical documents proving ownership anymore, though, as the government forced the transition to electronic shares years ago.

really, there are only two classes of people who still have a desire for physical shares. the first group of people are those who want to give them as a gift (and actually want to be able to hand the person something).  the other, larger, group are managers of hedge funds or some other very active find managers, who can avoid SEC required waiting periods by making physical delivery (this is pretty common with black-box funds).