President Donald Trump floated the idea Monday of companies no longer providing earnings report on a quarterly basis and switching to semiannual instead.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the idea is “subject to SEC approval” and would “save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies.”
“Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis??? Not good!!!’” Trump said.
The wisdom of quarterly reports has come under question before. In a 2018 op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon advocated doing away with quarterly guidance, though not earnings reports.
“In our experience, quarterly earnings guidance often leads to an unhealthy focus on short-term profits at the expense of long-term strategy, growth and sustainability,” the pair wrote.
Current regulations require companies to report earnings on a quarterly basis, though providing forecasts is voluntary. The rules can be changed either from the Securities and Exchange Commission or could be altered by Congress.
Supporters of the current system say it provides investors with timely opportunity as well as transparency about public companies.
Trump advocates end to quarterly earnings reports
byu/Puginator instocks
Posted by Puginator
35 Comments
Smart people don’t like him.
No reporting means no bad news about recession.
Just like when he said No covid testing means no covid cases. They want less transparency.
Unironically I think this is a good thing (less incentive for management of American companies to operate on short-term, quarter to quarter performance and base comp on that, and instead take the long-term view)
but Trump is probably doing this to hide economic pain lol.
Warren Buffett has been saying the same thing for decades. Buffett advocates for yearly earnings reports instead of quarterly reports.
Yeah this sounds like a terrible idea and would lead to rampant fraud lol
The intentions behind this are wrong.
I hate to admit it, but it’s the first intelligent thing to come out of this man’s mouth.
Quarterly earnings reports are critical for investors. Imagine holding a stock for +6 months not knowing if you should keep holding, buying, or selling a stock
Companies like The Trade Desk, Target, and Lululemon got slammed rightfully so. Imagine holding the stock still today because you had zero visibility on their recent results.
Just what we need? To help publicly traded companies to hold on to cash longer instead of writing dividend checks to share holders four times a year?
I was *just* as excited when my employer decided to pay out our 401(k) match on a quarterly basis instead of each paycheck. Who needs time in the market when it’s obviously better to have time out of the market…
There’s sarcasm there in case you missed it.
This totally wouldn’t only benefit insiders
It’s perfect for grifters
aka – quarterly reports to trump so lots of insider trading can happen with him and his cronies …. but he has more time to move things around before the announcements. this is horrendous and entirely self motivated!
Ah good, they want less transparency. -. –
I’m gonna go even further and say that in the era of modern technology and instant data processing these numbers should be released continuously in real time.
It’s the only way to prevent insider trading fuckery.
And NB4 “reeeeee but the SEC monitors insider trading”
Ok, so insiders trade the info to the insiders of other companies. The SEC isn’t watching what the insider at Tesla is doing with his NVDA stock and vice bersa.
never heard one thing he wants to start doing
So when you’re in charge of the “Golden Era of America” and you’ve saved the economy and made America Great Again… this is exactly what you would do, delay all those spectacular earnings reports and CEOs lavishing you with praise for the job you’ve done. Yes sir, that’s what a president would do, especially Trump.
Should be officially semi or annual reports but maybe an unofficial quarterly update
Not really a big deal since earnings don’t matter anyway for a company’s valuation.
Stupid. Not surprising
So basically he wants to make it that the next year second reporting to be after the midterms and the first one to be ahead with sufficient time to change the narrative until the midterms. Sounds about right🤔
If a company is only prioritizing short term profits, going from quarterly to semi annually won’t fix that, it only makes a retail investor “job” harder, big money will still have access to timely information and retail will be holding the bag for longer.
Easier to hide failures that way.
Another distraction…
This sounds good when said out loud but as retail investors why would we advocate for less transparency?
Have companies use AI to report every month or biweekly or hell every day even. Less sharp data changes more consistent input.
I actually do agree that companies should be able to prioritize multiyear planning instead of eating shit because they didn’t maximize profit every single quarter
Hmmm, wonder if this will lead into, a ‘president’s term should be longer than 4 years’..China doesn’t have elections every 4 years either ..
🤦♀️Alibaba is a Chinese company. [See their quarterly reports.](https://www.alibabagroup.com/en-US/ir-financial-reports-quarterly-results)
Bean counters are going to count beans. If you eliminate the quarterly report, retail investors are the only ones who won’t know how the company’s doing financially. Do you really believe the CFO of Tesla is only going to crunch their numbers every 6 months? That’s absurd. They’ll still have their daily, weekly, monthly, and, yes, quarterly results. They just won’t have to tell you about it for 6 months.
If this is the level of thought going into the trade negotiations…<side eyes last grocery receipt and cries because my precious coffee is about to go up again and I ain’t got any organs worth selling>
in a way I agree. But not for the reasons he probably wants it.
I think we need to buy a stock for a company. Too much speculation and trading is turning the market into a casino. We need to be less focused on what we can do in 3 months to boost earnings temporarily and what we can do to ensure profitability in 5 years.
It used to be companies only had to report annual earnings. Quarterly earnings are better for more transparency, but I could see the downsides. I think 3 earnings per year would be the sweet spot.
This is DEVASTATING to retail.
I use quarterlies more than 10k’s
not a terrible idea as long as they keep it as a yearly thing or every 2 quarters instead
Good way to put off information about the tariff effects
We need more time to have AI write the reports
No