Customer Account Types and Registrations

What this video covers

• Why account type and registration answer completely different questions, and how one account carries both labels simultaneously
• What retail customer account and institutional customer account actually mean as customer categories, not legal structures
• The $50 million total assets threshold that separates retail from institutional status for other persons, and why registered investment adviser is explicitly institutional
• Why a corporate registration does not alone establish institutional customer status, and how exam writers exploit this exact confusion
• What prime brokerage really is: a clearing and settlement arrangement, never a third customer category alongside retail and institutional
• How prime brokerage can serve substantial retail or institutional customers, and why compatibility with both matters on test day
• Reading registration to identify who legally holds the account, not who trades it or holds power of attorney