On August 20th, the SEC adopted amendments to improve transparency in the municipal securities market by better informing investors about the current financial condition of issuers of municipal securities and obligated persons. These amendments concern Rule 15c2-12 of the Securities Exchange Act and focus on the material financial obligations that could influence an issuer’s liquidity, overall creditworthiness, or an existing security holder’s rights.

On August 17th, the SEC voted to approve amendments to certain disclosure requirements that have become duplicative, overlapping, or outdated. These changes were proposed in light of other disclosure requirements, modifications to US-GAAP, or developments in the information environment. The SEC is also referring to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) particular disclosure requirements that overlap with but require information incremental to GAAP. These requirements will be considered for incorporation into US GAAP.

The SEC proposed rule amendments on July 24th to simplify and streamline the financial disclosure requirements applicable to registered debt offerings. These debt offerings are for guarantors and issuers of guaranteed securities, as well as for affiliates whose securities collateralize a registrant’s securities. The proposed amendments pertain to Rules 3-10 and 3-16 of Regulation S-X.

On July 18th, the SEC announced it will adopt amendments to Regulation ATS to enhance operational transparency and regulatory oversight of alternative trading systems (ATSs). This pertains to such systems that trade stocks listed on a national securities exchange (NMS Stock ATSs).

On July 18th, the SEC issued final rules to amend the Securities Act Rule 701. Rule 701 provides an exemption from registration for securities issued by non-reporting companies pursuant to compensatory arrangements. The amendment increases the threshold of aggregate sales price or amount of securities sold in excess of which the issuer is required to deliver additional disclosures from $5 million to $10 million, in accordance with the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

On July 9, 2018, EDGAR Release 18.2 was released by the Securities and Exchange Commission. This release contains a number of changes to various EDGAR forms as well as support for the IFRS 2018 XBRL taxonomy.

Occasionally I have had the need to serially capture images for later use. There are a number of utilities available, some free, with varying capabilities, that do this. Recently I was asked to try get download a bunch of photos from a site that had no simple way to download images. To accomplish this, I wrote a little script that lets a user capture images, presumably from a screenshot or from a right-click “Copy” command, and serially store them.

During the June 28th Open Meeting, the SEC voted to expand the definition of “smaller reporting companies” (SRC) to allow for more companies to qualify for certain existing scaled disclosure accommodations. The SRC category was established in 2008 in an effort to provide greater regulatory relief for smaller companies, as SRCs can provide scaled disclosures under Regulations S-K and S-X.

The SEC voted on June 28th, 2018 to adopt amendments to public liquidity-related disclosure requirements for certain open-end funds. These funds must now discuss in their annual or semi-annual shareholder reports the operation and effectiveness of their liquidity risk management programs. This requirement replaces a quantitative end-of-period discussion of historic aggregate liquidity classification data for fund portfolios as part of Form N-PORT.