SEC's Full Disclosure Reg Unplugs Analysts' Inside Connections

If investors have enjoyed the past four weeks of earnings warnings from companies poised to disappoint Wall Street, they're going to love life in the world of full disclosure.

Beginning Oct. 23, the Securities and Exchange Commission's full-disclosure regulation will prohibit companies from giving important information to a select few, most often favored analysts and investors. But Reg FD, as it's known, will mean more than a wave of Webcasts open to individual investors.

It will mean, perhaps more significantly, that the government may have achieved the old standard of addition by subtraction. Like nuns at the school dance, the SEC wants to see a little light between public companies and the analysts who cover them.

Traditions Die Hard

...