As noted in @Sarah Abrams’s recent guest post (here), President Trump last week proposed in a social media post changing the periodic reporting requirements for public companies from quarterly to semi-annual. Based on a separate interview of SEC Chair Paul Atkins published last week, it appears that the agency is prepared to move forward quickly with this proposal. We can expect to hear a lot of debate in the coming days about whether the proposed changed reporting requirements are a good idea. The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on Saturday about the proposed change, clearly coming down on the side that the proposed change is not a good idea. As discussed below, the article also had some interesting information and comparisons that will add to the discussion about the proposal.

The September 19, 2025, Journal article, which is entitled online “All the Reasons Trump Would Be Wrong to Ditch Quarterly Earnings,” can be found here. The interview of Paul Atkins to which I referred above was published in Politico and can be found here.

Among other things, the Journal article – and the Atkins interview as well, as it turns out – noted that the quarterly reporting requirement was instituted in 1970. While 55 years is a good long time, the adoption of the quarterly reporting requirement was more recent than I think I would have guessed. My assumption would have been that it was kind of timeless and ever-present. Not so, it turns out.

The other thing the Journal article discussed that I did not know is that the U.K. made quarterly reporting optional in 2014, so the U.K circumstances provide what the Journal article calls a “useful case study.” As is relevant to the discussion below, the U.K. experience is that for companies that switched to half-yearly reporting, “there was no effect on investment or research spending,” suggesting that the companies “didn’t start to think more about the long term.”

In advocating for the switch from quarterly to half-yearly reporting, Trump had argued that quarterly reporting costs too much and that it forces company managers to focus too much on the short term. The Journal article said, with respect to Trump’s reasoning, that “He’s wrong in every possible way.”

First, with respect to the supposed short-run thinking, a switch from just three months to only six months is not really going to be enough to make managers think longer term. But in any event, the Journal article contends, contrary to Trump’s assertion, that “companies aren’t excessively short-termist.” In fact, the article contends, today’s economy shows that companies are willing to invest in the longer term. Corporate investment overall in the U.S. was at 10% of GDP last year, which is higher than at any time before quarterly reporting was introduced in 1970. As noted above, the U.K example shows that longer reporting periods did not necessarily lead to increased investment or capital spending.

The Journal article concedes that quarterly reporting is expensive, but add that “it also saves companies money by reducing their cost of capital.” The Journal article suggests that some red tape could be cut – for example, companies could still release the figures and have a call, but drop the costly 10-Q form.

A change from quarterly to half-yearly reporting has drawbacks, too, the Journal article notes. For starters, the longer the time between periodic reports, the more information there is available to be exploited by insiders. (The U.K. avoids this problem by requiring material developments to be reported immediately.) A longer reporting period also means increasing uncertainty in the later months, which could hurt share prices, or at least make them more volatile.

The worst effect of a longer reporting period, the Journal article contends, is that it could “shift the power from shareholders to managers.” U.S. executives, the article contents, often forget that they work for the shareholders, and the requirement for a quarterly report to keep them accountable.”

The Journal article closes with the suggestion one change that would make a difference would be to “ditch earnings guidance,” which provides companies with a huge incentive for their leadership to massage the numbers to meet the guidance, a truly short-termist approach.” Quarterly reporting, the article concludes, “could be made less onerous, but it shouldn’t be scrapped.”

The one additional thing that the Atkins interview adds to the picture is the statement the article attributes to Atkins. “Everything,” Atkins is quoted as saying, “is up for examination.”

My own view is that if there we are going to change the quarterly reporting requirement, let’s make the longer reporting period optional. I like this approach because it allows shareholders to have a say, and it requires company management to be responsive to those preference. I also like the Journal’s suggestion, even for companies reporting quarterly, of eliminating the requirement for a Form 10-Q.

As a general proposition, I don’t like the proposed half-yearly reporting period. I think it could contribute to more insider trading – trading windows would inevitably be open longer, providing more opportunities for managers with insight into company performance to trade on their awareness of how the company is doing.

That said, I think it is pretty clear that mandatory quarterly reporting is probably over. It may also be clear that, in an environment where everything is on the table, there could be even further changes ahead. And all of this will last until the next big corporate scandal, and then the pendulum will swing and the motivation will change back to providing investors with greater protection.