SEC Trading Suspension Database for Quant Research

Turn SEC suspension orders into a point-in-time event panel while keeping regulatory action separate from fraud labels and later trading outcomes.

An SEC trading suspension database gives quant researchers a dated panel of regulatory interventions. Alphanume's SEC Trading Suspensions dataset records the release date, issuer identifiers, order window, stated reason, source documents, and derived first permitted resumption session. The event is the public order. It is not proof that the issuer committed fraud, and it is not a short recommendation.

The field reference explains the distinction between the order's start and termination times, the date of the SEC release, and resumption_at. That last field is permission to resume after the order ends, not evidence that quotations or trading actually resumed.

Choose the public order as day zero

A point-in-time regulatory panel should preserve the release identifier and issuer position as well as the date. One SEC release can name multiple issuers, so treating the release number alone as a row key collapses events. Ticker can be null, particularly in older orders, while issuer name is present throughout and CIK coverage improves in later years.

The derived business-day count is useful for checking the statutory window, but outcomes need a market-status source. Rule 15c2-11 and quotation requirements can keep a security from returning when the suspension expires. A return study that assigns the first permitted day as an observed trade will manufacture prices for names that never quoted again.

Retrieve two years with stable identifiers

Request the past two completed years and keep identifiers rather than filtering to ticker-present rows. Stable ordering uses date, release number, and issuer index. The full corpus currently fits within a large response, but clients should still honor has_more and return all three cursor components if pagination appears.

GET /v1/market-structure/sec-suspensions
date_gte=2024-01-01
date_lte=2025-12-31

Keep: date, release_number, issuer_index, issuer_name, ticker, cik,
suspended_at, suspension_start_time_et,
suspension_end_at, suspension_end_time_et, resumption_at,
suspension_business_days, has_resumed, cited_reason, cited_reason_detail,
order_url, see_also_url, last_updated

Save the raw order panel before resolving tickers or adding prices. If an issuer lacks a symbol, keep the row and record that price matching failed. If a later data refresh adds a CIK or changes a derived status, use last_updated to identify the revision instead of assuming the original extract was immutable.

Keep regulatory labels narrower than allegations

SEC orders state reasons that can include questions about public information, market activity, or issuer claims. The suspension itself is the observed action. A researcher should not convert reason text into a fraud conviction, management intent, or expected price direction without a separate labeled method and primary-source review. Later enforcement actions are separate events and should remain separately timestamped.

• Do not exclude ticker-null issuers before reporting coverage.
• Do not treat has_resumed as proof of an executed post-suspension trade.
• Do not attach a current issuer identifier without a point-in-time mapping.
• Do not interpret an account access error as a year with no suspensions.

A suspension panel also needs a policy for overlapping corporate events. Bankruptcy, delinquent filings, promotional activity, enforcement complaints, and ticker changes may occur near the same order. Adding those facts after seeing returns can turn a simple event study into an undocumented selection exercise. Define companion-event windows before joining them and retain the suspension-only population as the baseline. For price work, record the venue, quote status, adjustment method, and whether the first observed print was executable. Extreme post-event percentage changes can result from tiny reference prices or stale quotes. Report medians, tails, missing prices, and the share of issuers that never produce a reliable outcome rather than letting a mean conceal the market structure.

Keep the order text and any companion release in the audit package. A categorical reason created later is an interpretation layer, while the linked SEC document is the evidence. Version that layer and review disagreements before using it as a feature.

Produce the panel before testing returns

Export the two-year panel with one row per issuer named in an order. Verify uniqueness on date, release number, and issuer index, then open every order in a small monthly sample. Create a second table that records whether a reliable post-event price exists and the first actual quoted session. Only after that coverage audit should returns be calculated. Report missing and never-resumed securities as outcomes of the research process, not cleaning errors.