The Securities and Exchange Commission has required public companies to report earnings four times a year for decades. Monday morning, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social, saying that it should change to just twice a year. It’s something he asked the SEC to review during his first term as well.

Public companies spend a lot of time filing required earnings reports, and preparing for earnings calls (those are optional but have become common practice). Accountants, lawyers, and executives analyze every number and every word in these reports. They require a ton of resources.

“Most CFOs at most publicly traded companies, you know, they’d probably rather go to twice a year from four times a year,” said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

He said some execs think quarterly reports are distracting and narrow a company’s focus.

“Many companies, you know, they’re managing quarter to quarter,” Wren said, instead of thinking longer term, because each report impacts stock price.

Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, said an acute attention to shareholder value can dissuade companies from taking risks.

“But if it was open for six months then there could be the ability to introduce new strategies and then shut them down quickly if need be,” he said. Or give new strategies a chance to succeed before the market weighs in. 

Six months could also give companies time to do a lot of damage. Imagine if a manufacturer sees a giant drop in revenue and investors only find out half a year later.

“The worry is that there could be increased volatility in the share prices since there’s a greater lag between when actual data would be reported,” Stovall said.

The reporting lag could make investors uncomfortable buying a company’s stock altogether. It could also allow companies to delay dealing with problems or just hide information.

“You would be pushing less information into the public space and basically allowing companies to be much more private about what they do,” said John Blank, chief economist at Zacks Investment Research.

After all, these are public companies. Transparency is part of the process.