It's a pretty commonsense rule in my opinion, one that many investors might logically assume must already be the law of the land, but unfortunately isn't. In the article, I encouraged readers to let the SEC know whether they supported the proposed rule, and in response several hundred Fools wrote to the SEC . A couple of reporters have recently contacted me about the story, as it seems that the SEC has received an unprecedented number of public comments about this rule, and that the majority of the comments probably have come from readers of this site. I'll be upfront. In my December article, I provided a one-sided take reflecting my personal belief that the proposed rule was an outstanding one for individual investors.
Full text is available here .
The SIA is the principal lobbying outfit for the full-service brokerages. Through that method, the SIA argues, individual investors are protected from their own ignorance and emotion. It hardly needs saying that analysts perform a necessary and very valuable function in the U.S. capital market. The alternative model of millions of individual investors and potential investors poring over prospectuses and periodic reports is highly theoretical and out of sync with the real world. But it is also the few analysts operating independently of, and in competition with, each other that can relentlessly pursue an independent line of inquiry and ferret out negative information that management would rather not disclose or would prefer to disclose at a time of its choosing and with its own spin.