For more than half a century, public companies in America have lived and died by the quarter.
Every 90 days, Wall Street analysts and traders pore over earnings reports, dissect conference calls, and make snap judgments that can send a stock soaring or crashing within minutes.
But now, the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) is asking regulators to change the rules.
Their proposal: give public companies the option to report earnings only twice a year instead of quarterly.
On the surface, this appears to be a minor, technical adjustment. But in reality, it goes right to the heart of how we build prosperity in this country.
Quarterly reporting creates a culture of short-term thinking.
CEOs, under pressure to “make the quarter,” often slash investments, delay hiring, or put off bold decisions just to hit Wall Street’s numbers.
Legendary investor Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have both made similar statements. They warned years ago that this obsession with quarters prevents businesses from creating long-term value.
At American Prosperity, we’ve been making this same case to our readers for years: If you want to build real wealth, you have to ignore the noise of the next 90 days and focus instead on the next 5, 10, even 20 years.
That’s why I think the LTSE petition deserves serious attention.
Let’s step back for a moment.
Less Reporting, More Real Prosperity
In 1997, there were over 7,000 public companies in the U.S.
Today, that number has been cut in half. Part of the reason is that being public is just too burdensome.
Legal, compliance, and reporting costs eat up millions of dollars. For a young company, that’s money that could be reinvested into growth.
And let’s not forget the distraction. Executives spend weeks preparing for each quarterly call. That’s time they’re not thinking about building products, serving customers, or making their businesses stronger.
If we switched to twice-a-year reporting, it wouldn’t solve every problem, but it would alleviate some of the pressure.
It could also encourage more companies to go public, giving ordinary investors access to opportunities that today remain locked up in private markets and venture capital funds.
Critics argue that investors need timely information to make decisions. I’ll give them that.
But let’s be honest — does knowing whether a company beat earnings by a penny in the second quarter really help you become a better long-term investor?
For the vast majority of us, it doesn’t.
In fact, it often does the opposite — it tempts us into trading based on short-term results instead of owning great businesses for the long haul.
Our approach is not about guessing whether next quarter’s earnings will be up or down.
It’s about identifying businesses with powerful tailwinds, rock-solid financials, visionary leadership, and attractive entry points.
Wealth Is Built Over Decades
When you own a company like that, the day-to-day noise fades away. What matters is whether the business will be worth more five years from now. And that doesn’t change based on one quarter’s earnings call.
Think about it. If you had invested in Home Depot in 1981, you’d have seen dozens of disappointing quarters along the way.
However, the long-term story —America’s housing boom, the rise of DIY culture, and Home Depot’s relentless expansion —delivered life-changing returns.
If you’d invested $10,000 in Home Depot’s IPO, you’d be sitting on a fortune of more than $240 million today.
The winners of tomorrow will follow the same pattern.
The move to semiannual reporting won’t make headlines like an AI breakthrough or a trillion-dollar IPO.
But it could quietly shift the culture of corporate America away from short-term gamesmanship and back toward what matters most: building lasting businesses.
And for long-term investors like us, that’s exactly the environment where prosperity thrives.
At American Prosperity, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: tuning out the quarterly noise and focusing on the big picture.
Because at the end of the day, wealth isn’t built in 90-day increments. It’s built over decades.
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Regards,
Charles Mizrahi
Prosperity Insider
