Public markets run on rhythm, and if the beat changes, prices move differently.
That is what is at stake as the administration pushes to loosen US reporting rules and the SEC is hinting towards a change.
The proposal sounds simple enough. It aims to replace mandatory quarterly reporting with the option to report every six months and reduce the noise that surrounds each earnings season.
Strong arguments have emerged on both sides of the discussion.
What is actually happening
President Donald Trump revived a long running debate by urging companies to stop reporting quarterly and switch to a six month cadence.
The SEC under Chair Paul Atkins says it is prioritizing a proposal that would make frequency optional.
The pitch is a lighter rulebook and lower compliance costs. It is also a reset of the Gensler era, with less emphasis on broad disclosure mandates and a friendlier stance toward issuers.
Exchanges have floated support for optionality but not for an outright ban on quarterlies.
Investor advocates warn that fewer checkpoints mean wider information gaps and more room for insiders to act before retail holders learn what changed.
Quarterly reporting has been a fixture since 1970. It was built to deliver frequent, comparable data under GAAP and to anchor price discovery.
The cadence does more than fill calendars. It sets how often the market can recalibrate a narrative with audited style numbers and management discussion.
So altering the frequency means that the market’s information lattice changes with it.
Does frequency change investment behavior
The standard claim is that quarterlies force short term thinking, which makes the record thinner than the slogan.
When the UK made quarterly reporting optional in 2014, studies found no jump in capital spending or research among firms that moved to half year updates.
In the United States, companies have funded long horizon projects while reporting every three months. Big Tech is pouring vast sums into artificial intelligence infrastructure with payoffs measured in years.
Energy majors commit to multi year wells and refineries as a matter of course.
Corporate investment as a share of GDP has been strong in the modern era of quarterlies.
The pressure point sits elsewhere. Quarterly guidance drives managerial behavior more than the act of reporting.
Earnings per share targets create powerful incentives to smooth results with buybacks, trim discretionary spend, and pull forward revenue.
Guidance shapes the theater of earnings season and magnifies the race to meet a penny precise forecast.
Reporting provides the guardrail that lets investors test claims against standardized statements.
The evidence reads as an argument to rethink guidance practices rather than to dim the lights on disclosure.
Are international comparisons useful?
They are useful only with context. Europe generally requires semiannual reporting.
Many large European names still publish quarterly updates because investors expect them and lenders prefer them.
Mainland China requires quarterly reporting. Hong Kong is semiannual. Taiwan goes further and demands monthly revenue prints to deter fraud.
The claim that China invests for the long term because it reports less is not grounded in the rulebook.
Chinese investment intensity is driven by state direction, credit policy, and subsidies.
The result has included overbuilding and overcapacity along with lower listed company margins than in the United States.
Frequency did not deliver that outcome. Industrial policy did.
The US premium has rested on depth, enforcement, and disclosure.
Narrow spreads and low costs of capital grow out of confidence in the information set and the rules that police it. Trim the reporting frequency and the market does not break. It reprices.
A few basis points more in the equity risk premium for the companies that pull back.
A little less sell side coverage where data points thin out. A bigger step function move when results drop.
The effect is incremental but persistent, and it lands most heavily away from the largest names.
What a smarter reform could look like
There is room to cut real cost without cutting light. The accounting constraint is clear.
You cannot re measure accruals every month across accounts receivable, inventory obsolescence, and contingencies without large error and legal risk.
You can publish simple operating telemetry at low cost. A thin, machine readable monthly KPI sheet would give investors signal without forcing a full close.
The template can be sector based. Retailers can publish comparable sales and traffic.
Software can publish annual recurring revenue, net revenue retention, and churn.
Autos can publish deliveries and order book. Semiconductors can publish backlog and equipment orders.
No glossy narrative. No earnings per share. File it in XBRL and furnish it on a simple form.
To keep the numbers honest, a once a year limited assurance over definitions and systems would help.
It ensures that MAU means the same thing in January and in June and that churn is computed the same way across quarters. Pair this with a trigger rule.
When revenue or EBITDA deviates beyond a defined band from the last disclosed run rate, the company files a short interim update.
That reduces the risk of six month air pockets where the market flies blind while fundamentals have shifted.
Insider trading hygiene can be tightened around both the 10 Q filings and the monthly KPI drops with longer blackout windows and cleaner 10b5-1 plans.
This approach lowers compliance costs where it is real, trims the theater around guidance, and keeps the public on a reasonable information diet.
What a change to the rules means
Optionality would likely produce a split response. Large issuers with diverse holders and index weight are likely to keep quarterlies to protect liquidity and valuation.
Smaller issuers may move to six months to save cost and management time.
For the switchers, market quality metrics will tell the story.
Quoted spreads and depth. The size of earnings day gaps. Analyst coverage counts. The direction of implied and realized volatility around report dates.
Private channels also adjust. Banks that lend to firms with fewer public updates often demand more frequent private reporting in covenants. The cost is not eliminated. It moves.
If semiannual became mandatory, the market would adapt with a broader repricing of uncertainty.
Valuations would compress a touch at the margin. The dispersion between information haves and have nots would widen.
Retail investors would experience longer periods where these are hard to test with official numbers.
The effects would not overturn the core strengths of US markets. They would change the texture of the tape and the distribution of advantage.
The debate over quarterly reporting is not a culture war proxy or a question of etiquette.
It is a live choice about the tempo of information that anchors price discovery. A world with fewer checkpoints is a world with more room for narrative to drift before facts intervene.
Perhaps that is attractive to executives who want a longer runway. What is certain is that the market will charge for the extra time.
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