[paulsutter]

The brokerage only owns the stocks in your account if you enable margin on the account (you dont even need to use margin, if you enable margin they own what's in the account and if they go bankrupt your account is gone too).

If you keep margin disabled, you'll eventually get it all back even if the brokerage goes bankrupt.

During the financial crisis, I asked a broker to disable margin on my account (never used it anyway). It took weeks before that happened. Some "technical holdup" that they assured me had nothing to do with loaning or pledging the contents of my account.