Two years after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened the floodgates for companies to file Form 8-Ks, increased disclosure is indeed gushing through the investor landscape—even if it sometimes washes away insightful statements in the process.
The SEC overhauled its rules for 8-K disclosures in August 2004, expanding the list of “material events” that must be disclosed and cutting the filing time to four business days. Since then, the number of 8-K filings has marched persistently upward, from 77,500 in the one-year period before the rules change to 111,600 in the 12-month period that ended July 31.
