What is street-side booking?

Question

What is the meaning of the term "street-side bookings" in the context of broker operations? I suspect it has something to do with the Central Counter Party Clearing outlined in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Counterparty_Clearing .

Answer 1

This is a technical term referring to the "double entry"-styled book keeping of trades by brokers.

Suppose a client executes a buy order with their broker. The broker's accounting for this "trade" will be recorded as two different "deals" : One "deal" showing the client as buyer and the broker as seller, and a second "deal" showing the broker as buyer and the clearing house as seller. The net result of these two deals is that the broker has no net position while the client has a net buy and the clearing house has a net sell with respect to this broker's account as accounted for internally by the broker. (And the same methods apply for a client sell order.)

The client/broker "deal" record - i.e., the client side of the trade - is called the "client side booking", while the broker/clearing house "deal" record is called the "street side booking".

Answer 2

The way I would use it is, every trade done by a broker has a client side and a street side. The client side is for their brokerage account, and the street side is whoever they traded with

Say, John Doe calls me at Charles Schwab and wants to buy 100 IBM. I look at the market and decide that the best execution is on Arca. I trade on Arca for the client. Then, I book a client side trade into his account, and a street side trade against Arca. If I myself was a dealer in IBM and executed against my inventory, the street side would basically be internal, booking a trade against my account.