banchrima,
one real good advantage if you hold your stock in cert form is when a divi of some sort is issued, such as a cash or stock, the dividend gets mailed directly to you, not your broker, so if your broker is short the stock they cannot stall the delivery of the divi, as they have no part in your holdings at the time, and the company sends it to you as you are one of the first in line after the prefered stock holders if there are any~
If it's a cash divi you get a check based on the amount of shares times the rate of the divi, and if it's shares you then get a cert delivered to you~
One thing about it, you don't miss the divi, like what happens with some brokers I've dealt with who somehow get out of delivering whatever the divi was/is.
You can tell who's hit by who's hollerin'