Trump Says Companies Should Report Earnings Every Six Months

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00:00Let's go back to our top story this morning, Matt, and it is President Trump saying that

00:04companies should not be forced to report quarterly earnings. The president took to

00:08Truth Social to say firms reporting on a half-yearly basis would, quote, save money

00:12and allow managers to focus properly on running their companies. For more,

00:17we are joined by Bloomberg Intelligence senior government analyst Nathan Dean.

00:21Nathan, it's something Trump flirted with in 2018. How likely would this be to get through

00:27to the SEC, and what kind of big changes would it mean? So I think it's actually somewhat likely,

00:32but I would say is I don't think it's going to happen by 2027, because like you said,

00:36this is something that occurred before, back in 2018, and the market participants' reaction to

00:41this was somewhat mixed. Investors were like, look, we want this data, but companies were also saying,

00:46well, there potentially could be some capital formation positives for this idea of long-term

00:50investing. So I think what the SEC will do here is they'll say, certainly, President Trump,

00:55we are going to look into this. But it's not like they've, I don't think they've actually written

00:58a rule or anything like this. So I think they're going to go back, and either two scenarios will

01:02emerge. They're going to either do another request for comment, or they'll put out what's known as

01:05an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, both of those occurring probably in the first half of

01:09next year. And then they'll go through, and they'll try and find out more consensus of whether or not

01:13this is something the market wants, or is this something that the capital formation folks need.

01:18So I don't think it's going to happen by 2027, I'm sorry, I don't think it's going to happen

01:22anytime soon. But certainly by 2027, this could be a reality for the market.

01:26Nathan, has the president been using executive orders as much recently? And can he change

01:31regulations in that way?

01:35So, you know, the way that President Trump is using executive orders in the regulatory sense

01:39is just a fancy way of picking up the phone and saying to his agency leaders, saying, I want you

01:43to do this. And so if President Trump orders the SEC chairman to do this, even though the SEC

01:48is an independent agency, you know, we don't think the SEC is going to be in the business of telling

01:52the White House no. So I do think what will happen is somewhat similar to what happened in 2018 when

01:57President Trump's floated this with former SEC chairman Jay Clayton, is Jay Clayton came out and

02:01said, right, we'll do a request for comment, and we'll kick start the process. And I certainly think

02:05that Chairman Atkins would do the same here. The one caveat is, is that when that happened,

02:10the SEC ran out of time. In this case, it's early enough in the four years or the three years we have

02:14left that the SEC certainly can't do something before the end of the Trump administration.

02:18mentioned.