New SEC "Registered Fund Statistics Report" Now Available to the Public
Commentary by Steven Lofchie
In a new "Registered Fund Statistics" report, SEC staff provided statistics based on aggregated data from SEC-registered investment companies that file reports on their portfolio holdings on Form N-PORT ("Monthly portfolio holdings report"). The report will be updated on a quarterly basis and is designed to provide the public information on the registered funds industry.
In a news release, the SEC stated that the "report...is designed to provide the public with a regular and detailed picture of the registered funds industry—with its more than 12,000 funds and more than $26 trillion in total net assets under management." The current report provides statistics reflecting data from filings received through April 18, 2024, for reporting periods from March 2019 through September 2023. The report reflects data from both public and non-public information and is presented in more than 70 separate tables. Staff stated that the public may download the statistics in a structured format, which will provide the historical statistical series of information with each publication of the report.
In a separate statement, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said "Providing such data to the public is one of the more consequential things a government agency does. Such transparency creates a public good." He said that "Investors, issuers, economists, academics, and the public at large benefit from such regularly published economic data."
Commentary
There are a lot of tables in this new Report. It would be interesting to know who finds the information useful, which of the tables they find useful and what is the use case. Publishing information (and more importantly collecting it) that has no use case does not serve a public interest; it's just an expense.
Here are some relevant questions: What is the "large benefit" that investors, issuers, economists, academics and the public at large will receive from this data? What was the expense of collecting it? Did that large benefit outweigh the expense? (Be specific about your answers.)