As it similarly did at the end of 2014, the SEC announced "Top 10" lists this week for the most popular search terms and news releases on the SEC website (SEC.gov) in 2015.

Unlike in 2014, where the top 10 list of search terms contained bizarre dark horses such as "telexfree," "zhunrise," and "goas," the 2015 list is pretty much exactly what you would expect--generic but relevant terms related to fraud, the names of leading corporations, and key SEC forms and filings. Five of the top 10 terms are holdovers, having also made the list in 2014 (edgar, apple, 10-k, google, walmart).

Top 10 news releases # 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10 are enforcement-related stories about important SEC cases (e.g., a huge case against 32 defendants involving hacked news releases and a $180 million settlement with Citigroup affiliates over hedge fund fraud charges). As for news releases such as #4 ("Fee Rate Advisory #3 for Fiscal Year 2015)" they are clearly of burning interest to some segment of the SEC-watching world of which I'm not a part.

The SEC also noted that in 2015, SEC.gov received 6.9 billion page views. The SEC added that SEC.gov's users downloaded 1,600 terabytes of data from the site, which the agency said "would stretch to the moon and back 27 times." I do not understand what, specifically, the SEC is saying would stretch to the moon and back but for some additional context, the "printed collection of the Library of Congress" would be less than 10 terabytes of data.

Topics