So, this is a rabbit hole I've went down myself about a year ago. It's not exactly as bad as it looks. They don't actually "own" all the stock. They just have custody of the physical certificates (which you can still request be sent to you if you want as they are legally required to hand them over upon request). All this company does is make it easier to trade stock using modern methods. Instead of having to trade physical certificates of ownership every time you buy or sell stocks, they hold all of the physical certificates as a custodian, and you just trade ownership rights digitally (or on paper back in the 80s when it was mostly done by phone), thus allowing it to be much faster and easier to trade stocks.
So yeah, it DOES seem cabal-ish at first, but there's not much nefarious going on here. It's just a REALLY big custodian company, and they're legally required to hand over the physical certificates for whatever you own if you request it.
So, this is a rabbit hole I've went down myself about a year ago. It's not exactly as bad as it looks. They don't actually "own" all the stock. They just have custody of the physical certificates (which you can still request be sent to you if you want as they are legally required to hand them over upon request). All this company does is make it easier to trade stock using modern methods. Instead of having to trade physical certificates of ownership every time you buy or sell stocks, they hold all of the physical certificates as a custodian, and you just trade ownership rights digitally (or on paper back in the 80s when it was mostly done by phone), thus allowing it to be much faster and easier to trade stocks.
So yeah, it DOES seem cabal-ish at first, but there's not much nefarious going on here. It's just a REALLY big custodian company, and they're legally required to hand over the physical certificates for whatever you own if you request it.