When the SEC proposed letting public companies opt for a twice-a-year filing schedule instead of a quarterly reporting standard, the pitch was simple: less compliance burden, more management bandwidth, and an easier on-ramp for companies weighing whether to go public or stay private.

Those benefits, while tangible, likely come with a substantial intangible cost for investors and companies alike: increased volatility.

Six months of activity produces the same news over a year that three months does. It just does so in bigger, less frequent bursts. Markets price information continuously. Narrow the flow and the gap fills with rumor and speculation, enhancing the stakes and mystery until the next data point arrives. That's a recipe for increased volatility, which generally ends poorly for everyone involved.

We already know what this looks like.

In July, IBM's stock dropped more than 20% after the company released preliminary second-quarter numbers showing a revenue miss (eight days ahead of its scheduled July 22 earnings date). Even under a quarterly reporting calendar, in other words, IBM still had almost three months of accumulating weakness before the market found out. Stretch that same gap to six months, and the surprise waiting inside it only gets longer.

Supporters of the SEC’s push argue that quarterly reports incentivize bad behaviors, leading sales teams and executives to offer end-of-quarter discounts in order to meet guidance. However, doubling that disclosure period doesn't solve that problem. Long-term guidance already exists to contextualize short-term anomalies – which, in a 180-day scenario, just delays when investors get the context that balances the anomaly.

Unfortunately, the volatility case lands hardest on the people with the least. Professional investors already supplement quarterly filings with alternative data: satellite imagery of factory lots, app download and usage feeds, geolocation and credit-card panels, etc. Retail investors have the 10-Q.

When the space widens between official filings and the data institutions already have, you are further tilting the playing field.

‍Opponents weigh in

‍The SEC comment period for the proposal, which closed on July 6, echoes this pushback.

An AI-assisted tracker built by Ohio State accounting professor Tzachi Zach showed more than 95,000 letters as of July 21. Roughly 99.5% opposed the proposal. Only about 90 fully supported it.

It’s easy to browse the site and read the comments.

Many read like this investor: "Changing the reporting period for companies does nothing to benefit the common investor and will only benefit those with insider information. I have had a small investment account for 30 years now. Making financial information LESS available to me leaves me blind and does not allow me to make proper informed decisions for my financial future."

The opposition also runs deeper than retail advocacy. Practicing CPAs raised a technical worry: fewer checkpoints mean more room for accounting errors to slip through unnoticed. And then there's David Wells, Netflix's former CFO, who called quarterly reporting foundational to "democratic capital markets.” Wells represents a credible voice arguing against a change that, on paper, would have made his old job easier.

A CFA Institute survey of 2,500 charterholders found 62% opposed the switch and roughly 70% opposed giving companies the choice at all. Only a third expected companies to keep reporting quarterly voluntarily if the mandate disappeared, which represents a direct rebuttal to one of the SEC's core assumptions.

‍The supporting case‍

On the flip side, Eli Lilly said it plans to opt into semiannual reporting if the rule passes, while still issuing voluntary quarterly earnings releases. The company argues investors will barely notice the difference.

The American Bankers Association and ExxonMobil are also in favor.

Exxon's CFO filed an 11-page letter making the case, while recommending the decision stay optional rather than mandatory. A few smaller-company CFOs backed reduced reporting too, with caveats: Arthur J. Gallagher's CFO proposed a "triannual" middle ground instead of a binary choice, and Willdan Group's CFO argued the real burden is disclosure content, not filing frequency.

The core argument for supporters comes down to cost: compliance spend and management time. For early-stage or pre-revenue companies whose story isn't well captured by a quarterly income statement anyway, that math can make sense. It also fits Chair Paul Atkins's broader "Make IPOs Great Again" push to make public-company status less burdensome.

‍What happens next

‍The SEC hasn't said how the comment record will shape a final rule. There's precedent on both sides: the SEC floated this same idea in 2018 and dropped it after similarly negative feedback. In a 2026 online world rife with mis and disinformation, the risks of narrative drift for companies, the market force represented by retail investors, and the technical and information advantages of institutional traders only ups the stakes of such a change.  

Atkins has framed semiannual reporting as one piece of a larger deregulatory agenda, and he's noted that quarterly reporting only dates to 1970. Before that, the SEC required semiannual reporting. He’s also argued that concerns about reduced transparency are overstated given how many other ways investors have to stay informed between filings.

That tension is why people close to the process expect the SEC to finalize the rule anyway, according to published reports. An agency can read a comment file this one-sided and still decide the policy case outweighs it. If that happens, the real test of the volatility argument will be borne out in the first reporting cycle after a major company, like Eli Lilly, actually goes semiannual.

That test is also where the opportunity sits. A rule change can lower the floor on what companies are required to disclose, but it can't stop a company from voluntarily doing more. In a market hungry for information, situated within a fragmented and noisy information environment, regularly showing your results becomes an advantage that extends beyond the compliance obligation or nuisance.

The companies that keep delivering timely, factual updates to their investors, whether or not the SEC still requires it, are the ones most likely to earn durable trust, something the rule itself can't hand out. We believe there is alpha in that transparency and consistency.