The SEC just added another 465 pages of public comments on their proposal to kill quarterly earnings reports. Total comment count: nearly 190,000.
No other SEC proposal in history has triggered this kind of response.
Tells you everything about how deeply quarterly thinking is embedded in American capitalism. Whether you love it or hate it, the ritual matters. CEOs hate the short-term pressure. Investors hate the gaming. But everyone's terrified of what happens if we remove the forcing function.
Quarterly earnings aren't just data releases. They're accountability checkpoints. Remove them and you're asking: who watches the watchers?
The debate isn't really about reporting frequency. It's about trust, transparency, and whether markets can function without constant prodding.
No other SEC proposal in history has triggered this kind of response.
Tells you everything about how deeply quarterly thinking is embedded in American capitalism. Whether you love it or hate it, the ritual matters. CEOs hate the short-term pressure. Investors hate the gaming. But everyone's terrified of what happens if we remove the forcing function.
Quarterly earnings aren't just data releases. They're accountability checkpoints. Remove them and you're asking: who watches the watchers?
The debate isn't really about reporting frequency. It's about trust, transparency, and whether markets can function without constant prodding.