On August 13, 2025, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the creation of a Statistics & Data Visualizations page on its website. The page provides statistics on capital formation, market participants, market activity, and investors, aided by interactive charts, tables, and graphs that reveal key US capital markets trends.
The SEC indicates that the statistics, many of which were last updated on August 12, 2025, will be updated quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, depending on the data type.
One of the page’s interactive bar charts reveals the following data points and trends regarding the number of reporting issuers for calendar years 2004 through 2024:
- The total number of reporting issuers declined from 9,656 in 2004 to 7,902 in 2024, an approximately 18.2 percent decline. This period saw a peak of 10,598 reporting issuers in 2009 followed by a steady decline to a low of 7,475 reporting issuers in 2020.
- The percentage of reporting issuers that are US-domiciled exchange-listed companies has fluctuated, ranging from 40.1 percent in 2009 to 50.5 percent in 2022.
- The number of US-domiciled exchange-listed companies has decreased from 4,461 in 2004 to 3,929 in 2024, an approximately 12.1-percent decline, with some fluctuation.
- After declining to a low of 3,542 in 2018, US-domiciled exchange-listed companies increased to 4,408 in 2022 – an approximately 24-percent increase – before declining approximately 11 percent by 2024.
- The number of foreign-domiciled exchange-listed companies steadily increased from 392 in 2004 to 937 in 2024 (reaching a high of 1,009 in 2022).
- The percentage of reporting issuers that are foreign-domiciled exchange-listed companies nearly tripled from 4.1 percent in 2004 to 11.9 percent in 2024.
- The steepest decline in the number of issuers occurred among issuers of asset-backed securities (ABS), which rose to 2,102 in 2006 and decreased to just 236 in 2011.
According to the SEC Statistics Guide for Reporting Issuers (Guide), which is linked on the site, reporting issuers include all entities that filed an annual report in the relevant calendar year, including Forms 10-K, 10-K/A, 10-KT, 10-KTA, 20-F, 20-F/A, 40-F, and 40-F/A. The Guide also describes the issuer categories and the calculation methodology and data sources used to generate the statistics. The Guide states that the statistics are produced by the SEC staff and that the SEC does not express a view regarding the statistics, which are produced from information provided in Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) filings and commercial data sets provided by third parties.
In addition to reporting issuer information, the site provides statistics for other market participants such as transfer agents, registered investment companies, registered funds, investment advisers, private funds, and municipal advisers.
The page also includes data related to securities offerings. It sets out data visualizations showing transaction numbers and proceeds over several years for various types of securities offerings, including initial public offerings (IPOs) and follow-on registered, corporate bond, Regulation A, Regulation Crowdfunding, and Regulation D offerings. The securities transactions statistics further provide recent aggregated data regarding issuers, broken down by industry, location, and issuer type.
Finally, the site also includes statistics related to market activity and investors, including data regarding the number and percentage of US households qualifying for the accredited investor definition and participating in the capital markets over time.
The statistics shown in the various data visualizations can be downloaded into a spreadsheet for further analysis.
While the statistics on the site may be useful for helping to inform SEC rulemaking, securities law practitioners may also use it to conduct research or to help identify potential challenges to the US capital markets that may be addressed by the SEC in the future.
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