Series 99 cheat sheet
The whole Series 99 exam on one page: 13 lines, one per unit, each carrying the single highest-yield takeaway from that topic. Built for the night before and the morning of. Every unit name links to the matching free lesson in the CertFuel app, so anything that still feels shaky is one click from a full explanation.
This is the entire Series 99 boiled down to 13 lines, one per unit of the FINRA Operations Professional outline. Each line is the takeaway that earns the most points in that topic, written to be read in a couple of minutes rather than studied.
The sheet follows the exam's own shape: nine lines for broker-dealer operations (70% of the exam) and four for professional conduct and controls (30%). Read it top to bottom the night before your exam and again the morning of. The job is not to learn anything new: it is to sweep the whole outline quickly and find out which topics still feel solid and which do not. When a line lands flat, that is the signal. Click the unit name to open the matching free lesson in the CertFuel app, close the gap, and come back.
Worth being blunt about the limits: a cheat sheet is a review tool, not a shortcut past the material. The Series 99 runs on clocks and numbers (retention periods, settlement and transfer windows, margin thresholds), and a line can remind you a deadline exists without teaching it. If these lines read like new information, you are not ready to test yet.
Broker-Dealer Operations
70%- Account Opening and Maintenance: Account opening rests on three duties that never merge: collect the required customer information, verify identity under a written Customer Identification Program within a reasonable time before or after opening, and apply Know Your Customer diligence to the essential facts and the authority behind every account. Retention runs on separate clocks, five years for identity records measured from closure or the record, and six years for account information measured from update or closure. Maintenance keeps that information current, resolves failed verification through written procedures, and sends dormant property to the state only after the firm tries to reach the owner. Retirement accounts add their own rules: 2026 contribution limits, required minimum distributions that skip the Roth, and a 60-day, once-per-year clock on a customer-received IRA rollover. Match every disclosure to its product, not to the account.
- Cashiering and Account Transfers: Cashiering runs on two tracks: money and securities move through external systems, a wire transfer or an Automated Clearing House transfer, or through the firm's own books, a journal, and every movement needs the right authorization, a Letter of Authorization, a medallion signature guarantee, or a customer's sweep and reinvestment instructions. Account transfers move through the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service for a whole or designated-asset transfer, or outside it for a partial transfer, and once validated, the carrying member attaches what its books show, freezes a whole account, and later moves any residual credit. A customer's transfer request stays protected when a representative changes firms, defeated only by a lien or another bona fide claim, and a check moves only through controlled, traceable issuance, a blotter, and freedom from kiting, alteration, or an extended hold.
- Custody and Control of Securities: Custody and control protect the customer's economic interest in securities the firm holds: safekeeping and segregation keep them safe and separate, control status comes from a recognized clearing, custodian, or omnibus location, and a firm must promptly obtain possession or control of fully paid and excess margin securities, with written authorization or disclosure before lending or borrowing them; independent counts and stock-record verification catch discrepancies, good delivery, DRS, DWAC, and book-entry settlement move a verified position along, and a restrictive legend follows a restricted or control security until the six-month or one-year holding period opens the resale safe harbor, which still does not remove the legend on its own.
- Trade Reporting and Corrections: Trade reporting and its corrections run in sequence: an executed transaction becomes a trade report only when the member believes it is bona fide, a quotation needs reasonable cause to believe the same, and a stated-price offer stays firm under its stated conditions with one narrow size exception. Best execution asks whether the customer's order found the best market, and capacity names whether the firm acted as agent or principal. When a record needs fixing, an as/of report restores the original execution date, a past-settlement-date correction answers a different question, whether settlement already passed, and a Trade Reporting Facility correction reverses and refiles. An error account isolates the mistake meanwhile. Prohibited conduct spans front running, trading ahead, excessive trading, manipulation, unfair markups, improper payments, breakpoint sales, and profit or loss sharing.
- Margin and Securities Lending: Margin borrowing starts with account approval and a signed margin agreement, since collateral alone never authorizes credit. Regulation T sets 50% initial margin on a long equity purchase, maintenance holds long stock to 25% of current market value, and short stock carries 150% total Regulation T margin plus a separate price-tiered maintenance test. Disclosures cover six risks and go out before opening a noninstitutional margin account and at least once a year; a Regulation T call is due within one payment period, other deficiencies within 15 business days. Stock loans support short-sale delivery, so a locate needs a documented borrowing basis. Day trading is no longer counted; the firm tracks each day's intraday margin level, and a practice of missing deficits, with one unsatisfied past the fifth business day, brings a 90-day restriction on new exposure.
- Settlement: Settlement runs in sequence: comparison proves the buyer and seller agree on the security description, the price, and anything else needed for agreement, then delivery versus payment links securities to money so neither side takes the other's credit risk, and continuous net settlement reduces each member's activity in one security to a single long or short position against the clearing agency, which becomes the contra party. When a trade stalls, match the problem to the cure: a don't know notice settles whether the trade happened at all, a buy-in lets a buyer close a seller's uncompleted contract, after written notice on the standard path, and a close-out binds the clearing-agency participant on a deadline set by the source of the fail.
- Account Statements and Confirmations: An account statement tells the customer what is in the account and what happened during the period, a confirmation tells the customer what the firm did and in what capacity by transaction completion, and a tax form tells the customer and the taxing authority what the account did during the year, with cost basis as the starting figure that required adjustments turn into adjusted basis. Periodic reporting can stand in for an immediate confirmation only with prior written notice, and a prospectus runs on its own delivery clock separate from the confirmation. Across every document, a false price is prohibited regardless of which way it tilts the numbers, and withholding a required document is prohibited even when nothing on it is false.
- Regulatory Financial Requirements: Regulatory Financial Requirements traces one connected chain. The Financial and Operations Principal holds final responsibility for the firm's regulatory financial reports, supervising the people who prepare them and the people who maintain the general ledger, the central accounting record that supports every calculation. From that ledger, the firm files its Financial and Operational Combined Uniform Single report with the Commission, covering the firm, not any one customer. Net capital measures the firm's own regulatory resources under the Net Capital Rule, sized to the firm's activities. The reserve formula is a separate calculation, comparing customer credits against debits to size the special reserve account. Carrying agreements complete the picture: they allocate customer-account duties between firms, but never erase either firm's assigned responsibility.
- Books and Records: Books and records comes down to four habits: compare, post, retain, and protect. A reconciliation matches the firm's books against cash, securities, or account evidence, and any unresolved securities difference goes into the security count difference account. The blotter captures every purchase, sale, and money or securities movement daily, while the trial balance and the capital computation follow on a monthly cycle. Retention periods run three years for most transaction records and six years for blotters, ledgers, and securities positions, each easily accessible for the first two years, while customer account records run six years after closing. Electronic systems must preserve history through an audit trail or non-rewriteable storage, verify themselves, and stay accessible. Falsifying, failing to maintain, or losing access early are all violations.
Professional Conduct and Controls
30%- Relationships and Dealings: Relationships and dealings tests five separable issues, so pin down which one a question is really asking before you answer. Sort written or electronic material by audience: correspondence for a small retail group, retail communication for a larger retail audience, institutional communication for institutional investors only. Keep information privacy separate: Regulation S-P protects a consumer's personally identifiable financial information, requires notice and an opt-out before most third-party disclosures, and demands written safeguards for security, threat protection, and unauthorized-access protection. For commissions, the soft-dollar safe harbor needs investment discretion plus a good-faith reasonableness finding, paying an unregistered person turns on the recipient's actual activities, and vendor due diligence asks only whether the vendor can do the job.
- Customer Privacy: Customer privacy runs on controlled access: a firm protects customer information from improper use and disclosure inside and outside the firm, and fiduciary ownership information from a paying agent, transfer agent, or trustee cannot support a solicitation unless the issuer requests it and the member acts on the issuer's behalf. Regulation S-P requires a privacy notice, an opt-out choice before most nonpublic personal information sharing with nonaffiliated third parties, plus safeguards and secure disposal, and such information can hide inside a public grouping. A beneficial owner of nominee-held securities elects whether the issuer learns their identity: an objecting owner says no, a non-objecting owner says yes, and neither changes the ownership. Regulation S-ID closes the loop with a written program that identifies, detects, responds to, and updates identity-theft red flags for covered accounts.
- Escalating Complaints and Red Flags: Start with the definition: a customer complaint is a grievance from a customer or an authorized representative tied to the member's or an associated person's covered activities, and putting it in writing does not change that test. A potential red flag is a pattern, practice, or activity suggesting possible identity theft, recognized before anything is confirmed, often surfacing through identity-verification work like checking a new account against government watch lists. Keep the two classifications separate, since escalating one never converts it into the other. Then match the response to the issue: report a listed event promptly, and answer a detected red flag with a reaction sized to the actual risk, which sometimes means no reaction at all.
- Broker-Dealer Supervision and Control: Broker-dealer supervision runs on three legs: written supervisory procedures document the firm's supervisory system, get promptly amended and communicated when the law or the system changes, and get annually certified by the chief executive officer, while segregation of duties keeps one person from supervising their own work, reporting to a subordinate, or letting a subordinate control their pay, with designated principals testing whether the whole structure is reasonably designed. A written business continuity plan closes the loop, naming one senior-management registered principal to approve and review it, and disclosing to customers at account opening, on the website, and by mail on request, how the firm keeps their obligations moving through a disruption.
Can I bring a cheat sheet into the Series 99 exam?
No. The Series 99 is a closed-book exam delivered at a Prometric test center or through online proctoring, and no notes, rule summaries, or study material may come into the session with you. The center supplies a basic calculator and scratch material, and everything else goes in a locker. Use this sheet in the days before your appointment, not on exam day.
Is a cheat sheet enough to pass the Series 99?
No, and it is not meant to be. The Series 99 turns on exact retention periods, settlement and transfer timelines, and dollar thresholds, and no summary can carry all of them. This page is a review tool for someone who has already worked through that material: each line is a memory jog that should pull a whole topic back into focus.
What should I review the night before the Series 99?
Read this sheet top to bottom once the night before and once the morning of your exam. It sweeps both FINRA function areas in a few minutes, which is exactly what last-minute review should do: confirm what is solid and surface what is not. Broker-dealer operations carries 70% of the exam (35 of the 50 scored questions), so give those lines the closest read.
Is this Series 99 cheat sheet free?
Yes. The whole page is free and needs no account. Every unit name links to the matching free lesson in the CertFuel app, so you can open any topic that still feels shaky and read the full explanation behind the line.
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A cheat sheet tells you where you stand. Practice questions tell you whether you can actually apply it under exam pressure, which is where the Series 99 does most of its damage: two processes that sound alike, two retention clocks that run from different starting points.
Take the free Series 99 practice exam for a scored read on where you are, watch the free Series 99 video course for anything a line could not fix, or start at the Series 99 hub for the exam format, cost, and what the Operations Professional registration covers.
In the CertFuel app, the same material comes with an adaptive question bank that resurfaces your weak topics, FSRS flashcards, and an Exam Readiness Score that tells you when the shaky lines have stopped being shaky.