SEC Chair Atkins' Long Record of Betraying Investors Is Shocking

Introduction Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins has to know that what he is doing is wrong. He is dismantling the guardrails that protect investors in our securities markets, as detailed below. But because the SEC is supposed to be the investor's advocate, he can't admit he is actively undermining its mission. Thus, he says his actions are consistent with investor protection. No one – especially investors – should be fooled. Indeed, investors should recognize that Chair Atkins has a tell. Every time he proposes an anti-investor action, he says he is doing so with appropriate safeguards. He doth protest too much. If Chair Atkins really wanted to protect investors, he would pursue an agenda that puts investors first. Instead, his agenda mirrors the financial industry's agenda. The result is the systematic dismantling of the protections that have made our capital markets the envy of the world, which they are because, before Chair Atkins's tenure, they used to be well regulated and well policed. The SEC is Dismantling Disclosure Requirements Disclosure is the foundation of securities regulation in this country. The disclosure requirements of the federal securities laws provide investors with material information so they may make informed investment decisions. Chair Atkins is eliminating these requirements one at a time. Semiannual reporting Chair Atkins has proposed eliminating the requirement that public companies provide investors with quarterly reports. Instead, he wants to allow companies to file reports only every six months. This means investors would receive half the information they do currently. Although the SEC has required companies to file quarterly reports for over 50 years, Chair Atkins says that it can adopt semiannual reporting 'without undermining fundamental investor protections.' This isn't so. The proposal would allow companies to continue to access the public markets to obtain investors' money while providing investors less information less frequently about their investment, which will impair their ability to make informed decisions to buy, sell, or hold. The proposal would particularly disadvantage retail investors who, unlike institutional investors, will lack the resources and relationships to obtain the information they need. The proposal would reduce the efficient functioning of markets through timely disclosure because pricing will be more volatile and likely more frequently inaccurate. If the Commission finalizes this proposal, it will do so after receiving over 200,000 comments, most from individual investors, with over 97% of the commenters opposing the change. Public Company Disclosures Chair Atkins has proposed reducing the disclosures that public companies must provide investors, both when they sell securities to the public and on an ongoing basis. According to the SEC, it can do this 'while maintaining robust investor protections.' Again, this is not the case. The SEC wants to increase by 60% the number of companies that may sell securities to the public while using an abbreviated offering document that provides only minimal disclosures. The SEC wants to vastly expand when companies can sidestep state law registration and qualification requirements that protect investors when they raise money from the public. The SEC wants to weaken the 'gun jumping' rules that prevent companies from hyping their stock prematurely before investors get the disclosures required in an initial public offering. The SEC wants to allow more public companies to qualify for reduced disclosure obligations on an ongoing basis while acknowledging that doing so may make it ' more difficult and costly for investors to make informed investment decisions .' The SEC wants to eliminate requirements it previously deemed material to investors such as disclosures about insider trading, cybersecurity, and performance relative to an index. The SEC is also apparently on the cusp of issuing a proposal that would cut back executive compensation disclosure requirements, which allow investors to decide if the CEOs and other corporate officers that run the companies in which they invest are paid fairly. Climate-Related Risks Chair Atkins has proposed rescinding the climate risk disclosure rule that requires companies to inform investors of the climate-related risks that they face. The SEC now says the rule 'harm[s] the very investors it seeks to protect' by requiring the disclosure of immaterial information. Investors say otherwise. Major asset managers and pension funds responded to the proposed rescission of the climate rule by saying that climate-related information is financially material . Companies that work with issuers recognize that investors expect climate disclosures . These perspectives reflect the view that the climate risk disclosure rule protects, rather than harms, investors because there can no longer be any serious dispute that the climate-related risks companies face matter for their future financial prospects. The SEC is Silencing Shareholders The basic bargain for shareholders is that they invest their money in the corporation in exchange for certain rights. These rights include the rights to bring matters before other shareholders, to elect directors, and to express their view on corporate governance matters and other fundamental issues related to the corporation's business. Chair Atkins is also dismantling these rights. Shareholder Proposals The SEC adopted Rule 14a-8, which governs shareholder proposals, to facilitate shareholders' traditional ability under state law to present their proposals for consideration at a company's annual meeting. Chair Atkins frames his antagonism to shareholder proposals as a way to protect 'those shareholders that represent the strong majority' and prevent the shareholder proposal process from resulting in the 'tyranny of the minority.' Yet all he is doing is silencing shareholders. The SEC first made it easier for companies to exclude shareholder proposals, especially those raising social or ethical concerns, so that regardless of whether the proposal would command majority or minority support it never gets before shareholders for a vote. The SEC then said it would not review any determination by a company to exclude a shareholder proposal from its proxy materials, giving companies unilateral discretion. The SEC now suggests that it may rescind Rule 14a-8 entirely . Chair Atkins is apparently frustrated that more companies have not acted to exclude shareholder proposals . He recently said that now 'companies have mechanisms at their disposal to help them fight for themselves,' but that 'if companies remain lackadaisical and refuse to pick up the substantial tools that we have laid on the table to help them do so, then I do not know what more we can do to intervene in their stead .' His solution seems to be killing Rule 14a-8. Atkins's remarks belie the notion that he is acting to protect the majority of shareholders from a tyrannical minority. It is clear that he simply wants to prevent shareholders from exercising their democratic right to demand a vote on practices of the companies they own. Proxy Advisory Firms Proxy advisory firms provide shareholders with independent advice and unbiased recommendations about how to vote on matters affecting the companies they own. Without these firms, investors would receive only management's perspective on the key issues facing the company. All too often, management's perspective favors management over the long-term interests of the company and its shareholders. But under Chair Atkins, the SEC has attacked the influence proxy advisory firms have over corporate policy and public company management as a 'dysfunctional system' in which the 'retail American investor' somehow 'pays the price.' To the contrary, retail investors would pay the price if they could not receive independent advice. Communications with Companies In addition to submitting and voting on proposals, shareholders need to be able to communicate with their companies so that their voices are heard. Yet under Chair Atkins, the SEC is making this harder and harder. It has issued guidance making it more difficult for institutional investors to engage with companies on critical issues like executive compensation and ESG practices without triggering restrictive disclosure requirements. It has also issued guidance that forces hedge funds engaged in activist campaigns to effect change at specific companies to disclose their clients. The SEC says that its intention with issuing such guidance is to 'assist registrants . . . without sacrificing investor protection.' By impeding shareholder communications, the SEC is definitely assisting companies, but it is also unquestionably sacrificing investor protection. The SEC is Curtailing Investors' Ability to Sue Another essential right of shareholders is the ability to sue the company when it fails to disclose information, provides incomplete or misleading information, or otherwise breaks the law. This lets shareholders hold the companies in which they invest accountable for their lawbreaking. Chair Atkins is curtailing this right. Mandatory arbitration The SEC long held the view that mandatory arbitration provisions, which prohibit shareholders from suing the corporation in court, were inconsistent with investor protection. But Chair Atkins – without following the typical rulemaking process, giving public notice, or receiving public input – has now reversed that position and announced the SEC will no longer object if corporations include such provisions in their governance documents. In doing so, he has suggested that such provisions actually favor investors. Indeed, he has seemingly endorsed the adoption of such provisions, saying that they 'have merits,' such as 'quicker payments to shareholders and reduced litigation costs.' This misrepresents the impact of mandatory arbitration on investors. Arbitration is very expensive for individual investors because their individual losses are often relatively small even if the corporation's conduct is egregious and widespread and the total harm to investors related to the wrongdoing in total is substantial. Arbitration prevents shareholders from joining together to file a class action against the company, thereby reducing investors' costs and enabling accountability for serious corporate wrongdoing even if the amounts are small for individual shareholders. Arbitration forces investors to litigate their case before a panel that is typically comprised of individuals with ties to the industry and under rules that disadvantage them . Arbitration almost always results in a win for the corporation and rarely results in a win for investors. Litigation Safe Harbors Chair Atkins also wants to make it more difficult for investors to win even when they get to court by adopting safe harbors that insulate companies when they fail to disclose material information. According to Chair Atkins, such measures would ultimately benefit the corporation's shareholders by protecting the company from litigation by hindsight. All they would really do is prevent shareholders from recovering when companies misrepresent the risks that they face. Eliminating Registration Statements Even more incredibly, Chair Atkins wants to prevent corporations from having to file disclosure documents that could subject them to liability in the first place. The securities laws allow shareholders to sue when companies include false or misleading statements in the registration statements they use to sell securities. Some companies go public by both offering unregistered shares to the public and selling new shares pursuant to a registration statement. In Slack v. Pirani, the Supreme Court held that to sue the company for making false or misleading statements in a registration statement, a shareholder must be able to trace their shares and prove that the shares they purchased were registered pursuant to the registration statement. Chair Atkins recognizes that this will prevent some shareholders from establishing a claim against the company for material misstatements or omissions in the registration statement. Chair Atkins's proposed solution, apparently, is to eliminate the need to file a registration statement when a company goes public in this way entirely. He questions whether, in light of the Slack decision, a Securities Act registration statement continues to offer meaningful investor protections. He says his goal is to reform these offerings while preserving investor protections. Chair Atkins is ignoring the fact that the registration statement in this type of offering remains a key protection notwithstanding the Slack decision. There are many actions that the SEC could take to ameliorate the impact of the Slack decision, all of which would be consistent with the SEC's investor protection mission. What would not be consistent with the SEC's investor protection mission is using the Slack decision to further undermine investor protections by eliminating the need for corporations to file registration statements when they conduct these types of offerings. The SEC is Exposing Retail Investors to Risky Private Market Assets Eliminating disclosure requirements, silencing shareholders, and curtailing their ability to sue will all harm investors in the public markets. At the same time, the SEC is working to expose retail investors to the opaque, illiquid, and risky assets that pervade the private markets, which lack the investor protections and remedial measures available in the public markets. The private markets have long been limited to so-called accredited investors who have the resources to fend for themselves without the disclosure requirements and other protections that exist in public securities offerings. Now, Chair Atkins says that he wants to 'facilitate retail participation in private markets while preserving their protection with appropriate safeguards.' Chair Atkins certainly wants to facilitate retail participation in the private markets, but by doing so, he will not preserve the guardrails that protect them in securities offerings but rather remove them. Irresponsible retailization Chair Atkins says that he wants the 'responsible retailization' of the private markets. Yet his proposal would facilitate retail investors' exposure to the private markets while enabling investment advisers to charge related performance fees. This is decidedly irresponsible. The financial industry favors private market assets because it can earn high fees from those assets. Yet the high fees that pervade the private markets mean investors are unlikely to earn better returns in private market assets than in public securities offerings. Research increasingly shows that, once fees are taken into account, private market investments underperform their publicly traded counterparts. Without better returns, all opening up the private markets to retail investors does is expose them to assets that are riskier than assets in the public markets. Private market assets rarely change hands, which means that retail investors will not have the liquidity they are used to in the public markets. Information about private market assets is also not readily available, so private market assets are hard to value. Even institutional investors struggle with the lack of transparency in the private markets. There is no reason to expose retail investors to assets that cause even institutional investors to suffer huge losses . The SEC also cannot allow private funds to sell to retail investors while still considering their assets 'private.' There is no such thing as private market assets in the hands of the general public. Sales of securities to the general public are by definition not private securities transactions. So funds that want to sell their securities to the retail investors that comprise the general public should have to do so under the rules for public offerings. It would be irresponsible of the SEC to treat a public offering as a private offering. Private Equity and Hedge Fund Systemic Risk One of the reasons the SEC says it is appropriate to expose retail investors to the private markets now is its view that recently there has been 'increased oversight of and reporting by both private fund advisers and registered funds.' Although it is true that under Chair Gary Gensler the SEC adopted a rule to better regulate private fund advisers, a court invalidated that rule after the industry challenged it, and the SEC under Chair Atkins has done nothing to resurrect it. In fact, under Chair Atkins, the SEC has been more focused on reducing, rather than increasing, the oversight it conducts of private funds and the information that they must report. On June 11, 2025, Chair Atkins announced that he had instructed the staff to undertake a ' comprehensive review ' of Form PF, the form requiring disclosures by advisers to private funds like private equity and hedge funds. The form was created after the 2008 crash to enable regulators to see risks and interconnections between highly-leveraged and opaque pools of capital. Chair Atkins characterized the form as imposing 'significant compliance burdens on the private fund industry,' so even though the SEC had previously thought it was necessary to adopt new rules to increase transparency and better protect private fund investors , Chair Atkins thought the existing rules provided too much protection. On April 20, 2026, the SEC proposed to amend Form PF to eliminate disclosure obligations for private fund advisers unless they had $1 billion in assets under management. The next day, Chair Atkins said the SEC was ' closely monitoring ' the turmoil in the private credit market. Chair Atkins did not explain how eliminating disclosure obligations for private funds would help the SEC monitor private funds. On August 31, 2026, the SEC extended the compliance dates for amendments to Form PF that it had adopted in 2024. The order extended the compliance date to July 1, 2027. This followed three previous extensions for changes that were originally supposed to take effect in March of 2025. The SEC had adopted the amendments to enhance the Commission's understanding of the private funds industry . Chair Atkins did not explain how these extensions – which are really a de facto repeal which keep the private markets opaque – make it safer for retail investors to participate in the private markets. Private credit ETFs In February 2025, the SEC allowed a private credit exchange-traded fund (ETFs) to start trading. It did so despite the staff's concerns about the fund's liquidity and ability to comply with valuation rules. Since that time, the concerns over private credit have only grown. Private credit funds normally impose a limit on redemptions of 5% per quarter, meaning investors can only get one-twentieth of their money out every three months. But investors have become worried about the risky and opaque assets in these funds. As a result, recent investor redemption requests in many funds have far exceeded this limit . This means that investors who want their money cannot do so. Instead, these investors have to get in line and wait for some indeterminate time in the future to get their money. In the second quarter of 2026, investors sought to withdraw $15.6 billion from widely held private credit funds. This was up from the $13.9 billion they sought to withdraw in the first quarter. Despite the rising requests, fund managers only returned $5.9 billion to investors in the second quarter, down from the $7.4 billion they returned in the quarter prior. So investors already in private credit can't get out fast enough. This means that now is hardly the time to get more retail investors into private credit. It is hard to imagine anything less protective of retail investors than exposing them to products in which other investors are trying to get out but instead are trapped and prevented from getting out. The SEC is Weakening Market Structure Safeguards The SEC must make markets work for investors, including by having rules that ensure they receive the best prices on their securities trades and that reduce their costs of trading. Instead of strengthening existing rules to accomplish these ends, Chair Atkins is rescinding, withdrawing, or delaying rules that seek to achieve these goals without proposing any rules to replace them. Chair Atkins is thus weakening the safeguards that protect investors when they trade. The Trade-through Rule The SEC has proposed the rescission of the 'Trade-through Rule,' which ensures that investors receive the best prices on their trades by prohibiting exchanges from executing trades at worse prices than those available on other exchanges. The rescission of the rule benefits the crypto industry because decentralized trading venues are not equipped to ensure that investors receive the best prices on their trades. This might be a reason to institute a trade-through rule for crypto assets, but it should not be a reason to rescind a rule that has protected investors for 20 years. Naturally, the SEC does not say it is rescinding the rule to benefit crypto. It says that its proposal serves investors because the rule restricts investor choice. However, without effective rules to replace the Trade-through Rule, all rescission will do is leave investors unprotected. The SEC says that rescinding the Trade-through Rule will assist investors for whom the speed of their order execution and the quantity they are able to buy or sell matter more than the price they receive. But rescinding the rule without requiring that brokers ensure their customers receive the best execution of their orders leaves investors who want the best price unprotected. So rescinding the rule does not increase investor choice but rather leaves most investors to fend for themselves at the mercy of market middlemen who seek to maximize their profits by ensuring investors do not get the best price. Regulation Best Execution One of the reasons the SEC said rescinding the Trade-through Rule would not harm investors was that investors' brokers would ensure that they got the best prices on their trades. According to the SEC, best execution is 'an evergreen obligation that is at the core of a broker's relationship with its customer.' The problem is that no SEC rule imposes a duty of best execution on a broker. The SEC previously proposed Regulation Best Execution, which would have established a duty of best execution under the SEC's rules, but it withdrew that proposal under Chair Atkins. That leaves only a FINRA rule that is weak and insufficient to ensure that investors receive the best prices on their securities trades. The only way that the 'evergreen obligation' of brokers to pursue best execution will protect investors is through an SEC rule that the Commission can enforce on an order-by-order basis when investors trade. Access Fee Caps The rescission of the Trade-through Rule and the withdrawal of Regulation Best Execution will increase investors' costs of trading. The SEC previously attempted to reduce investors' trading costs when, in a unanimous and bipartisan rule change in 2024, it lowered the cap on access fees that exchanges may charge for accessing their quotes. However, now the SEC says that it wants to determine 'the appropriate level for an access fee cap,' despite a federal appeals court already ruling that there is no reason to 'second-guess' where the SEC set the fee cap in 2024. Chair Atkins has prevented the rule the court upheld from going into effect . And an exchange is now seeking exemptive relief from the Commission from the rule the court upheld, so that it and other exchanges do not have to comply with the lower access fee cap. The fact that the SEC is ' keenly interested ' in the exemptive application signals that it is less concerned with finding 'the appropriate level' for the access fee cap and more concerned with finding a way to allow exchanges to still charge investors more . The SEC is Turning Stock Exchanges into Casinos In addition to letting brokers and exchanges charge investors more to trade, the SEC wants to allow brokers exchanges to offer investors the ability to trade in the middle of the night. Chair Atkins says that he wants to balance 'round-the-clock trading with all-important investor and consumer protections.' The problem is that limiting trading hours itself protects investors. Research shows that the more trading hours are extended the worse retail investors do. Retail investors do better when they trade less frequently. The ability to trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week is likely to lead to worse overall performance for investors. Investors will also receive worse prices on trades in the middle of the night. Liquidity will be lower, which means that spreads will be higher. However, retail investors may not understand that the price they get at 3 am is not the same price they could get at 3 pm. The ability to trade around the clock could even lead to trading addiction . The ease with which gamblers can bet on sports from their phones at 3 am has led to a gambling addiction epidemic. A move to 24/7 stock trading risks inviting the same consequences. This risk is particularly high with the increased use of gamification and AI. In this respect, Chair Atkins's desire to align the stock market 'with those markets that already trade continuously' is not an alignment that favors investors. The markets to which he refers are the crypto markets, but the crypto markets lack investor protections and are notoriously volatile, and crypto trading addiction has become so prevalent that there are now centers that specialize in treating it. There is no reason to make the stock market more like the crypto market. The difference between investing and gambling is that gambling 'is a zero-sum endeavor in which the house always wins in the end, whereas investing promotes economic growth and distributes the gains among all (diversified) participants.' Crypto blurs the line by being a purely speculative investment. A move to 24/7 stock trading, which even those in the industry describe as 'the worst thing in the world,' will further blur the line by turning exchanges into casinos. The SEC is Now the Crypto Promotion Commission Chair Atkins's desire to align the stock market with the crypto market is not surprising given his support for the crypto industry. He has described crafting rules to benefit the crypto industry as the SEC's 'job No.1.' What is surprising is that he would try to convince anyone that his embrace of the crypto industry, which remains rife with fraud, is consistent with investor protection. Yet he has said that he wants to promote crypto innovation 'while ensuring strong investor protection guardrails are in place.' The SEC's actions with respect to crypto demonstrate otherwise. The Token Taxonomy In March, the SEC issued an interpretation of the federal securities laws that set forth its view that most crypto assets are not securities. Chair Atkins framed the SEC's 'token taxonomy' as ensuring the SEC fulfills its mission 'of protecting investors involved in securities transactions.' The problem is that the SEC's token taxonomy ignores reality. The SEC says that the federal securities laws generally do not apply to items that are purchased for use or 'consumption' and treats crypto as assets that generally fall into this category. Yet that is not why most people buy crypto. Most people buy crypto as an investment . Even some financial professionals acknowledge that crypto assets are nothing like commodities . The SEC's failure to recognize that fact leaves investors in crypto assets unprotected . The token taxonomy did say the SEC would exercise jurisdiction over tokenized securities, which followed from its view that tokenized securities are securities . Although this makes it sound as though tokenized securities will be subject to the same rules as traditional securities, the SEC is preparing to issue an 'innovation exemption' that would prevent tokenized securities from having to comply with all of the SEC's investor protection rules . Regulation Crypto Assets In August, the SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets to make it easier for crypto companies to raise money from investors. In doing so, Chair Atkins insisted that the proposed rules preserve core investor protections. But far from imposing meaningful protections, the proposal exempts crypto offerings from the protections of the federal securities laws. The entire purpose is to allow the crypto industry to sell crypto to the public without the registration requirements that ordinarily protect investors. So after its token taxonomy said most crypto assets do not fall within the SEC's jurisdiction, Regulation Crypto Assets exempts from the federal securities laws those that do. This is why Regulation Crypto Assets is viewed as an enormous gift to the crypto industry. Enforcement Cases Although the SEC's attempts to regulate crypto out of the SEC's jurisdiction would seem to leave investors susceptible to scams, Chair Atkins insists that is not the case. After the SEC dismissed a slew of crypto cases early in the new administration despite winning almost 100% of those cases, Chair Atkins attempted to reassure investors that his new crypto framework was 'not a promise of lax enforcement at the SEC.' The idea was that those cases involved registration violations, which he viewed as impermissible 'regulation by enforcement.' Chair Atkins said that 'fraud is fraud' and that the SEC would pursue crypto fraudsters 'to the full extent of the law.' Unfortunately, the SEC does not believe the law extends very far when it comes to crypto. The SEC has dismissed cases alleging fraud in the crypto markets over and over and over . SEC Enforcement is Now More Notable for the Cases It Dismisses Chair Atkins has justified his approach to enforcement, both with respect to crypto cases specifically and with respect to enforcement cases generally, by explaining that he wants the SEC to prioritize cases 'that provide meaningful investor protection.' As with his approach to regulation, his enforcement record reveals that the opposite is the case. SEC enforcement is at a 20-year low . Chair Atkins is not bringing cases that provide meaningful investor protection because he is not bringing cases period. Indeed, enforcement at the SEC under Chair Atkins is more notable for the cases the SEC has dropped than the cases the SEC has brought. In addition to the crypto cases, he has dismissed cases alleging that firms were operating as unregistered dealers, dismissed cases alleging that an investment adviser violated the rule limiting the amount of illiquid assets mutual funds could hold to 15% of its portfolio, and dismissed cases alleging that a company ran an illegal $27 million personal loan scheme to fuel its CEO's lavish personal lifestyle. Far from prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection, by dropping these cases Chair Atkins has left investors more vulnerable than ever. Not only is the SEC bringing fewer cases than ever, but the SEC is doing less publicizing of the cases it actually brings. In the first six months of 2026, the SEC issued only two press releases announcing new enforcement cases. It is as if the agency does not want the public to know when it is enforcing the securities laws. It is hard to understand how this contributes to meaningful investor protection. Even more unusual is that at the same time the SEC has started to issue releases trumpeting the cases it has lost . Even more astonishing is the SEC's new policy in the cases it actually brings to allow defendants to settle while still denying liability. For over 50 years, the SEC prevented defendants from receiving the benefit of a settlement in the form of more lenient sanctions and then later creating 'the incorrect impression that there was no basis for the Commission's enforcement action' by denying the charges. Under Chair Atkins, the SEC rescinded this policy. This means defendants can settle charges and still tell the investors that the SEC found them to have defrauded and that the SEC was wrong. This is exactly what happened in one recent case, where the defendant settled charges that he used false claims and promises to solicit investments from investors while at the same time saying that he 'delivered for my investors' and that he 'reject[ed] these allegations completely.' The SEC is Dismantling the Consolidated Audit Trail The SEC's aversion to enforcement also explains its hostility to the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), the most effective tool the SEC has to fight crime on Wall Street. In ordering a comprehensive review of the CAT, Chair Atkins has said that he merely wants the SEC 'to reform the CAT to a fit-for-purpose regulatory resource that is appropriately governed and operated at reasonable cost.' However, the steps that the SEC has taken thus far indicate an intent to dismantle the CAT entirely. The CAT allows the SEC to monitor in real time the activities of Wall Street's biggest and most dangerous financial firms and identify if they are manipulating the markets or otherwise breaking the law . That is why the industry has opposed the CAT from the start, and one of its chief lines of attack is the costs of operating the CAT. Although Chair Atkins has invoked those costs to justify the steps he has taken to reduce the CAT's effectiveness, we have shown previously that the costs of the CAT pale in comparison to the revenues of the securities industry and the size of the markets the SEC regulates. One step Chair Atkins has already taken in the name of reducing the CAT's costs is to eliminate customer identifying information such as names, addresses, and years of birth from the CAT. The problem is that this will prevent the SEC from identifying the parties responsible for abusive trading. Indeed, in its order allowing the CAT to stop collecting this information, the SEC acknowledged that doing so would make its own job harder . The SEC has also issued an order that allows the CAT to delete all data more than three years old. Again, the SEC acknowledges euphemistically that this will 'impact regulatory efficiency,' which means that it will prevent the SEC from catching crooks. That is because the statute of limitations for securities fraud is generally five years, and thus regulators often need access to trading data that is more than three years old in order to bring enforcement actions. It is hard to envision a more shameful change than letting the CAT delete data before the relevant statute of limitations expires. It is also hard to see how this change could possibly render the CAT a fit-for-purpose regulatory resource. Conclusion Chair Atkins wants the public to believe that the actions the SEC takes under his leadership are consistent with investor protection. But an examination of those actions reveals that they are not. Instead, under Chair Atkins the SEC is obliterating the rules that have long protected investors and instilled them with the trust and confidence that they can invest in the securities markets safely. So Chair Atkins is not only doing the opposite of what he says he is doing. He is also doing the opposite of what the chair of the SEC, an agency that exists to protect investors, is supposed to do. By this point in Chair Atkins's tenure, it should be clear that regardless of what he says he is not the investor's advocate. By this point, it is clear that investors are on their own.