Do I own ETFs when going through a broker?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: WoJ Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/154433 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I am considering investing in ETFs, mostly to learn, and without any formal financial education. If this matters for the question, I am French living in France. I started to read about ETFs and found a long list of "recommended" brokers ( Interactive Brokers , Trade Republic , Degiro , ...). All of them offer the ETFs I am interested in (the very basic ones such as iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF , iShares Global Clean Energy UCITS ETF , ...) I understand of course that the market is volatile and that I can lose what I invest because of that market . I would like to understand to which extent I own what I invested in. Specifically, If I invest in an ETF, do I have ownership on that ETF (similar to how I can own shares), or is it just an instrument that belongs to (either the manager or the broker)? Even more specifically, say the following happens - would I still own the ETF? the Issuer ( iShares / BlackRock for instance) goes bankrupt the Broker ( Trade Republic for instance) goes bankrupt The reason for my question is that I would like to understand if the choice of a broker should be driven exclusively by their costs (how much will it cost me to buy 1 EFT, and then how much will it cost me to sell 1 EFT) and possibly the comfort of their interface/payment means/ ..., or whether I should also worry about their long term existence ? (because if they go down, so go my investments) Note: I would like to highlight that I understand the market risk (at least I know that I can lose and gain and that it goes in waves, and that the past is not an indication of the future, etc.) but worry about the intermediates.

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Bob Baerker Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/154439 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. An ETF is a basket of securities that trades on an exchange just like a stock does. If you buy these, the shares go into your brokerage account just like buying shares of stock do (all are in street name). The purchase and sale cost will be whatever commission your broker charges per transaction. If the broker goes bankrupt and you are using a US based broker, they are covered by SIPC insurance which achieves recovery. SIPC insurance does not cover loss of share value.