At 4:07 p.m. on Friday, September 25, DraftKings (DKNG $20.30 -2.31%) filed an 8-K saying its audit committee had dismissed BDO as its auditor and appointed Deloitte. Nothing in it was alarming. The filing reports no disagreements with BDO, the switch takes effect after the 2026 audit, and the committee had made the decision two days earlier. But it went public at a time with a reputation: Friday, after the market closes.
The Friday-night news dump is one of the oldest ideas about corporate disclosure. To test it, we timed every 8-K filed by Nasdaq and NYSE operating companies since January 2025, 89,040 filings from 4,157 companies, using the second each one went public on EDGAR. The answer is a qualified yes. Earnings almost never come out on a Friday evening. Listing notices, auditor changes and executive resignations do, more often than the timing of the underlying events explains. And the timing didn't soften the market's reaction.
The data behind this piece
Explore the primary data Equibles carries for DKNG:
The short answer
- 10.5% of all 8-Ks went public on a Friday after 4 p.m. Eastern. For notices that a company had failed an exchange's listing rules it was 38.6%, for auditor changes 21.5%, and for earnings results 2.0%.
- The 4 p.m. rush happens every day. 62.2% of 8-Ks went public after the close, and 46% to 47% in the hour from 4 to 5 p.m., Friday or not.
- It isn't just the four-day deadline. When the event happened on a Tuesday or Wednesday, so the deadline fell the next week, 42.1% of listing deficiency notices and 25.2% of auditor changes still came out on Friday evening, against 7.5% of all 8-Ks.
- Departures lean toward Friday, arrivals don't. 14.6% of CEO and CFO resignations went public on a Friday evening, against 8.9% of appointments and 7.4% of retirements.
- The market noticed anyway. Listing deficiency notices released on a Friday evening were followed by a median abnormal return of -2.3% in the next session, against -1.5% for those released on other evenings.
The 4 p.m. rush is every day
Most 8-Ks go public when the market is closed. Of the 89,040 in our data, 62.2% were accepted by EDGAR after 4 p.m. and most of the rest before the 9:30 a.m. open. Only 6% to 9% came out during trading hours. Companies release news after the close so investors have the evening to read it before trading resumes, and that holds every day of the week.
Friday differs in three ways. It's the quietest day, with 14,310 8-Ks against 16,682 on Mondays and 20,936 on Thursdays. Fewer Friday filings come out before the open (26.2% against 32.3%). And more of them come out late, between 5 and 5:30 p.m. (14.7% against 10.6%), just before the cutoff after which a filing takes the next business day's date.
What lands on a Friday evening
An 8-K reports one or more numbered items, from results (Item 2.02) to an auditor change (Item 4.01). Comparing the items shows what Friday evenings are used for.
| Item | 8-Ks | Friday after 4 p.m. | Filed the day of the event |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listing notice (3.01) | 1,531 | 35.5% | 14.8% |
| Auditor change (4.01) | 688 | 21.5% | 12.9% |
| Restatement (4.02) | 127 | 20.5% | 25.2% |
| Shareholder vote results (5.07) | 7,962 | 19.4% | 24.6% |
| Officer or director change (5.02) | 15,716 | 16.1% | 22.9% |
| Material agreement (1.01) | 13,209 | 15.0% | 29.9% |
| Reg FD release (7.01) | 24,797 | 5.7% | 71.9% |
| Results (2.02) | 26,894 | 2.0% | 90.5% |
| All 8-Ks | 89,040 | 10.5% |
Two kinds of 8-K emerge. Results and Reg FD releases come with a press release and usually go out the day the news is made: 90.5% of results 8-Ks were filed the day of the event, and only 2.0% landed on a Friday evening. The items that cluster on Friday are the ones that usually come without a press release, where the 8-K is the announcement: listing notices, auditor changes, vote results, officer changes. Only 19.4% of Friday-evening 8-Ks included results or a Reg FD release, against 48.4% of 8-Ks filed after 4 p.m. on other days.
That second group mixes bad news with plain paperwork. Shareholder vote results are rarely news at all, and they cluster on Friday evenings nearly as much as restatements do. So the Friday share alone doesn't prove anyone is hiding anything. The deadline might explain it.
Is it just the deadline?
Most 8-K items are due within four business days of the event. An event on a Monday is due by Friday, so some Friday filings are simply companies using all the time they have.
To separate that from choice, we looked at events that happened on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Their deadline falls the following Monday or Tuesday, so filing on Friday evening is neither forced nor the last chance. Across all 8-Ks, 7.5% of those still came out on Friday after 4 p.m.
Listing notices and auditor changes stand apart: 38.2% of all listing notices, 42.1% of the deficiency notices among them and 25.2% of auditor changes waited for Friday evening, three to five times the overall rate, when the company could have filed on Wednesday, Thursday or the following Monday. Routine paperwork such as vote results and bylaw changes also leans toward the end of the week, but at about half that rate.
Most listing notices are bad news, but not all. We sorted the 1,531 by their Item 3.01 text. 1,296 report that the company failed a listing rule or moved a step closer to delisting, about half of them over a share price below $1 and others over late reports, stockholders' equity or market value. 84 report that the company regained compliance, and 74 are voluntary moves to another market or voluntary delistings. The bad ones are the Friday ones: 38.6% of the non-compliance notices went public on a Friday after 4 p.m., and 42.1% of those that arrived on a Tuesday or Wednesday, against 17.9% of regained-compliance notices and 8.1% of voluntary moves. Same exchanges, same item number, same filing burden; the difference is whether the news is good.
Auditor changes are less clear-cut. 156 of the 688 followed a merger of audit firms, such as Moss Adams combining with Baker Tilly in June 2025 or CBIZ buying Marcum's audit business, and those technical changes went public on a Friday evening even more often (25.6%) than the rest (20.3%). Dismissals (373 filings) and resignations or refusals to stand again (193) went out on a Friday evening at similar rates, 20.1% and 24.4%. Add routine rotations like DraftKings', and the Friday lean for auditor changes looks as much like paperwork left for the end of the week as like hiding.
Departures lean toward Friday
Officer changes are reported under Item 5.02, which covers both arrivals and departures. We split CEO and CFO changes by what the filing says happened.
| CEO and CFO changes | 8-Ks | Friday after 4 p.m. |
|---|---|---|
| Resigned | 992 | 14.6% |
| Terminated or removed | 173 | 11.0% |
| Appointed | 2,957 | 8.9% |
| Retired | 499 | 7.4% |
A retirement is usually planned and announced with a successor; an appointment is good news a company wants seen. Resignations are the ones that lean toward Friday evening. CFO resignations are the clearest case: 16.1% of the 609 went public on a Friday after 4 p.m., and 16.4% of those where the resignation happened on a Tuesday or Wednesday. "Terminated or removed" covers dismissals but also roles that ended in a merger or restructuring, which may be why it sits in the middle.
Holiday weekends
The afternoon before a long weekend has the same reputation. On the 17 trading days before a market holiday or a three-day weekend in our period, 69.5% of 8-Ks went public after 4 p.m., against 64.5% on other Fridays. It's a lean, not a rush.
Did it work?
The point of a Friday-evening release, if there is one, is a quieter reaction. Research on earnings announcements found weaker reactions to Friday news, though a later study argued that was because of which companies announce on Fridays rather than less attention from investors.
For listing deficiency notices, the item most concentrated on Friday evenings, we compared the stock's return over the first session after the notice went public with the S&P 500's (SPY's) over the same window.
| Deficiency notices released | Notices | Median next-session return vs SPY | Share that trailed SPY | Median after five more sessions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday after 4 p.m. | 486 | -2.3% | 68.7% | -4.5% |
| Monday to Thursday after 4 p.m. | 569 | -1.5% | 62.7% | -5.0% |
| Before 4 p.m., any day | 206 | -1.2% | 63.1% | -4.5% |
Friday-evening notices were followed by a bigger drop on Monday, not a smaller one, and five trading days later the two groups were in the same place. If the aim was to soften the hit, it didn't work on average. The companies that file deficiency notices are small and their stocks are volatile, so these are medians over noisy data, and they compare different companies rather than the same notice released on different days.
The filing-date trap
EDGAR treats an 8-K accepted after 5:30 p.m. as filed on the next business day. Of the 437 8-Ks that went public on a Friday after 5:30 p.m., 377 carry the following Monday's filing date and 53 the Tuesday after a Monday holiday. Anyone who studies timing by filing date sees a Friday-evening release as a Monday filing. The acceptance time, to the second, is the moment the filing became public, and it's the one to use.
How to check when a filing went public
- Open the filing's index page on EDGAR. "Accepted" is the time it went public, in Eastern time. "Filing Date" can be the next business day.
- Compare it with "Period of Report" on the same page, the date of the event. Most items are due within four business days of it.
- Check what came with it. Results and most big announcements come with a press release. Listing notices, auditor changes, vote results and many officer changes don't, so the 8-K is the only announcement there is.
Every company page on Equibles lists its SEC filings, which you can read in full; DraftKings' are here. You can also ask an AI assistant connected to our MCP server, for example: "Find DraftKings' 8-K about its auditor change and tell me what it says about disagreements with BDO."
How we built this
- Companies: built from the same company list as our going-concern study: the companies in our database that filed a 10-Q in 2026, without blank-check companies, kept if the SEC's current company ticker file lists them on Nasdaq or the NYSE (NYSE American included).
- Filings: every original 8-K (no amendments) with a filing date from January 1, 2025 to October 26, 2026, from the SEC's submissions data: 89,040 filings from 4,157 companies, with each filing's items, event date and acceptance time.
- Timing: acceptance times converted from UTC to Eastern time, checked against EDGAR index pages on both sides of the daylight saving changes. "Friday after 4 p.m." means accepted on a Friday from 4 p.m. on.
- Days from the event: business days between the period of report and the acceptance date.
- Officer changes: our extraction of each 8-K's officer and director changes, read from the filing text, classified by role and by what happened.
- Listing notices and auditor changes: the Item 3.01 and 4.01 text of each filing, sorted by rules: a notice that the company "has regained compliance" counts as regained unless the text says it has not, and an auditor change counts as following a merger of audit firms when the item says the firm merged or sold its audit business. In a random sample of 30 listing notices, all 29 sorted as non-compliance were correct; the other was a board vacancy left as other.
- Returns: split-adjusted closing prices; the first session after the filing is the next trading day for filings after 4 p.m. and the same day for earlier ones, minus SPY's return over the same window.
Limitations
- Timing shows where news lands, not why. A board that meets on Thursdays will produce Friday filings without any intent to hide them.
- The event date comes from the filing's period of report, which companies set themselves; a few are clearly off.
- Item codes are broad. An officer-change 8-K can report several changes at once, and we count it in each category it reports.
- Return comparisons are medians over small, volatile stocks and don't control for which companies choose Friday.
- The company list comes from 2026 quarterly reports and today's exchange listings, so companies that were delisted or stopped reporting after a deficiency notice are mostly missing, which tilts the return comparison toward survivors.
Conclusion
Friday evening is real but specific. Companies don't use it for earnings, and they don't use it more than other evenings for news in general; the hour after the close is busy every day. They do use it for a narrow set of disclosures that come without a press release and that few want to publicize: exchange listing notices, auditor changes and executive resignations, at rates the four-day deadline doesn't explain. On the evidence of deficiency notices, investors still found the news by Monday.
Sources
- SEC EDGAR submissions data (data.sec.gov), filings from January 1, 2025 to October 26, 2026, and EDGAR filing index pages.
- SEC Regulation S-T, Rule 13 (17 CFR 232.13), on filings submitted after 5:30 p.m.; Form 8-K General Instruction B.1, on the four-business-day deadline.
- DraftKings Inc., 8-K filed September 25, 2026, Item 4.01 (0001883685-26-000034).
- Stefano DellaVigna and Joshua Pollet, "Investor Inattention and Friday Earnings Announcements", Journal of Finance, 2009.
- Roni Michaely, Amir Rubin and Alexander Vedrashko, "Are Friday announcements special? Overcoming selection bias", Journal of Financial Economics, 2016.
- Closing prices: Equibles market data.