So Trump just dropped another Truth Social bomb that has corporate America scratching their heads: He wants companies to ditch quarterly earnings reports and switch to a twice-a-year schedule instead. Because apparently, nothing says “Make America Great Again” like making CEOs report their numbers less often.
Here’s the deal: Right now, every public company has to spill their financial guts every three months to the SEC. It’s like a quarterly confession booth, but instead of sins, it’s revenue and profit margins. Trump thinks this is dumb and wants to switch to a six-month cycle, claiming it’ll “save money and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies.”
His reasoning? China thinks in decades while America thinks in quarters, and that’s “Not good!!!” (Yes, he used three exclamation points. We counted.)
This isn’t Trump’s first rodeo with this idea. Back in 2018, he floated the same concept on Twitter after chatting with “some of the world’s top business leaders.” The SEC basically said “thanks but no thanks” and nothing happened. But now he’s president again, so maybe this time it’ll stick.
The quarterly reporting requirement has been around since 1970, which means it’s older than most of your favorite memes. But plenty of big shots have complained about it over the years. BlackRock’s Larry Fink called the current system “quarterly earnings hysteria” (dramatic much?), while Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon wrote a whole Wall Street Journal op-ed about how short-term thinking is ruining everything.
The argument goes like this: When companies have to report every quarter, they get obsessed with hitting short-term targets instead of building for the future. It’s like judging a marathon runner based on their first mile split – technically informative, but missing the bigger picture.
Europe already made this switch back in 2013, moving to twice-yearly reporting. And guess what? Their companies didn’t collapse into chaos. Though to be fair, European companies also get six weeks of vacation, so maybe they’re just better at the whole work-life balance thing.
But here’s where it gets interesting: Some research suggests quarterly reports actually help investors predict future earnings better than semi-annual ones. It’s like having more data points on a graph – sure, it’s more work, but you get a clearer picture of what’s happening.
The real question is whether this change would actually help companies focus on long-term growth or just give them more time to hide their problems. Because let’s be honest, if a company is struggling, waiting six months to tell investors about it isn’t exactly transparency at its finest.
Wall Street is probably having mixed feelings about this. On one hand, fewer earnings calls means less stress for executives and analysts. On the other hand, less frequent updates mean more uncertainty, and uncertainty makes traders nervous. And when traders get nervous, things get weird fast.
So will this actually happen? That’s the million-dollar question (or in today’s market, the trillion-dollar question). Trump can suggest it all he wants, but the SEC has to actually implement it, and regulatory changes move slower than a Windows 95 computer.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if America’s quarterly earnings ritual becomes a thing of the past, or if this is just another Truth Social post that gets forgotten faster than last week’s TikTok trend.