TD Ameritrade 2018 Annual Report

TD AMERITRADE HOLDING CORPORATION NOTES TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS — (Continued) 88 The Company clears its clients' futures transactions on an omnibus account basis through unaffiliated clearing firms. The Company also contracts with an external provider to facilitate foreign exchange trading for its clients. The Company has agreed to indemnify these unaffiliated clearing firms and the external provider for any loss that they may incur from the client transactions introduced to them by the Company. See " Insured Deposit Account Agreement " in Note 21 for a description of the guarantees included in that agreement. 16. Fair Value Disclosures Fair Value Measurement — Definition and Hierarchy ASC 820-10, Fair Value Measurement , defines fair value as the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability (an exit price) in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. ASC 820-10 establishes a hierarchy for inputs used in measuring fair value that maximizes the use of observable inputs and minimizes the use of unobservable inputs by requiring that the most observable inputs be used when available. Observable inputs reflect the assumptions market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability, developed based on market data obtained from sources independent of the Company. Unobservable inputs reflect the Company's own assumptions about the assumptions market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability, developed based on the best information available in the circumstances. The fair value hierarchy prioritizes the inputs to valuation techniques used to measure fair value into three broad levels, as follows: • Level 1 — Quoted prices (unadjusted) in active markets for identical assets or liabilities that the Company has the ability to access. This category includes active exchange-traded funds, money market mutual funds, mutual funds and equity securities. • Level 2 — Inputs other than quoted prices included in Level 1 that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly or indirectly. Such inputs include quoted prices in markets that are not active, quoted prices for similar assets and liabilities in active and inactive markets, inputs other than quoted prices that are observable for the asset or liability and inputs that are derived principally from or corroborated by observable market data by correlation or other means. This category includes most debt securities, U.S. government agency mortgage-backed securities, which consist of Ginnie Mae Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, and other interest-sensitive financial instruments. • Level 3 — Unobservable inputs for the asset or liability, where there is little, if any, observable market activity or data for the asset or liability.