With a few clicks on his keyboard and one social-media post to the world, President Donald Trump revived a long-running debate on the merits of quarterly earnings reports. The resolution could have significant ramifications for investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission is listening to the president. After Trump’s missive on Truth Social on Monday morning — arguing the SEC should do away with its quarterly earnings requirement in favor of semiannual reports — the U.S. securities regulator said in a statement it is “prioritizing this proposal to further eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens on companies.” Trump’s idea is not a new one. In fact, semiannual reporting requirements are the standard in Europe, and they also were in the United States between 1955 and 1970. Then, the SEC switched over to the quarterly requirements we have today. Debate over earnings disclosure standards — and whether they create problematic short-term thinking — came to the fore in 2018 during Trump’s first stint in the White House. In June of that year, Warren Buffett, arguably the most famous long-term investor in history, and JPMorgan’s influential CEO, Jamie Dimon, co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that decried the practice of companies issuing quarterly earnings guidance. Then in August, Trump took it a step further and advocated for twice-a-year reporting altogether. Trump’s push didn’t gain traction that time around. But now it’s back. Will it happen? In a note to clients Tuesday, strategists at Wolfe Research put the odds at greater than 50%, though they cautioned it won’t happen overnight based on the SEC’s standard protocol for changing rules. “The process for implementing this change should stretch into [the second half of 2026] if not beyond, and there’s a chance it fizzles out based on pushback in the notice-and-comment rulemaking process,” Wolfe Research wrote. Another important question for investors: Would a move back to the semiannual reporting structure be beneficial? As with most things investing, it depends. In favor of the status quo On one hand, the quarterly reports we get today allow for more transparency and contact with the leadership teams steering companies. Not only do we get official numbers every three months and backward-looking discussion on what contributed to that performance, we also get commentary from management one to two months into the current quarter. And even for companies that don’t provide formal guidance, we still often get executives’ high-level expectations for the months ahead. This is arguably more beneficial to the home-gamers that may lack access to pricey research from Wall Street brokerages, don’t have a direct line to investor relations teams, and don’t have millions to allocate to alternative research methods beyond sell-side reports — like paying for conversations with industry experts or satellite images that track how many cars are in a retailer’s parking lot on any given day, and so on. Sure, the big money also benefits from official financial statement filings because this helps with their modeling efforts. However, these deep-pocketed investors — think like hedge funds and asset management firms — would still be able to garner a ton of information even without the quarterly filings thanks to analyst channel checks, industry conferences, management discussions, and access to the resources noted above. Yes, home-gamers have access to the audio of many industry conferences and can get access to some analyst notes. But it’s ridiculous to pretend as if the access to public company management teams is the same for both cohorts. In effect, the positive of quarterly reports comes down to transparency. When Jim Cramer preaches buy-and-homework investing, a big part of that is paying close attention to earnings season — and not just when your own portfolio companies report. Earnings from industry peers offer “read-throughs” that can provide insights as well. So, supporters of the status quo believe that getting this opportunity four times a year is more optimal to a less-frequent alternative. In favor of semiannual On the other hand, proponents see benefits to less frequent reporting. For starters, they argue that preparing for quarterly reports is costly. Trump specifically mentioned in his Truth Social post that reporting every six months “will save money.” Others believe the current short-term focus of the market deters companies from wanting to be publicly traded in the first place. “President Trump realizes that whether it’s the U.K., [or] it is the U.S., our public markets are atrophying, and this might be one way to bring back and cut costs for public companies without harming investors,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on…
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