Form EFFECT Files Dataset

The Form EFFECT Files Dataset is a complete archive of EDGAR EFFECT notices — the short, machine-generated notifications that the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance and Division of Investment Management publish to record that a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement or post-effective amendment has been declared effective. Each record corresponds to one EDGAR accession number and captures a single effectiveness event: the underlying registration form (for example S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, N-4, or N-6), the registrant's CIK and legal name, the Securities Act file number, and the exact date and time of effectiveness. Because EFFECT is authored by the SEC rather than by a registrant, every notice is submitted under EDGAR's synthetic staff CIK 9999999995, and the affected registrant appears inside the body of the notice rather than as its filer. The dataset begins on 2006-05-01, when EDGAR replaced mailed paper effectiveness orders with electronic EFFECT notifications, and it is distributed as monthly ZIP containers holding normalized JSON metadata alongside the raw EDGAR XML submission and its XSLT-rendered HTML view.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

A single record in the Form EFFECT Files Dataset is one EDGAR EFFECT notice: a machine-generated notification issued by the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance or Division of Investment Management recording the moment a Securities Act registration statement or post-effective amendment was declared effective by the Commission's staff. In the dataset, one record corresponds to one EDGAR accession number and is materialized as one accession-numbered folder holding exactly three artifacts: a normalized metadata.json, the raw EDGAR submission XML (primary_doc.xml), and EDGAR's XSLT-rendered human-readable view of that XML at xslEFFECTX01/primary_doc.xml. Because the EFFECT form is issued by the SEC itself rather than by a registrant, the notice has no exhibits, no financial statements, no attachments, and no registrant-prepared narrative; the entire informational payload is a short header plus a single <effectiveData> block identifying the registration statement that became effective.

Form EFFECT is an electronic effectiveness order. Before May 2006 the Commission communicated effectiveness through paper orders mailed to registrants and filing agents; since May 2006 EDGAR has issued these notices directly into the public filing stream so that any observer can see, in near real time, which registration statements have been declared effective and when. The notice is not a disclosure document in the ordinary sense. It does not contain offering terms, risk factors, or financial information. It carries only the administrative fact of effectiveness, the date and time of effectiveness, the form type of the statement that became effective (for example S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, N-4, N-6, or a post-effective amendment on one of those forms), and identification of the registrant together with the file number of the underlying registration. The accession number of the underlying registration statement is not embedded inside the notice; the file number is the sole cross-reference.

Every EFFECT filing is submitted under the synthetic filer CIK 9999999995, EDGAR's internal "SEC staff" issuer identity used for Commission-generated notices. Accession numbers therefore all follow the pattern 9999999995-YY-NNNNNN. The registrant whose statement was declared effective appears inside the body of the notice rather than as the filer, which is a structural inversion relative to registrant-submitted forms. The dataset is distributed as ZIP containers and each record bundles XML and JSON artifacts for the same notice.

Content Structure of a Single Record

Inside one accession folder the three files play distinct roles:

• primary_doc.xml is the canonical machine-readable form of the notice and is the only content document the SEC attaches to an EFFECT submission.
• metadata.json is a normalized JSON-shaped projection of the same notice, enriched with EDGAR submission header fields (SIC code, fiscal year-end, state of incorporation, tickers, IRS number, film number) drawn from the registrant's EDGAR entity record.
• xslEFFECTX01/primary_doc.xml, despite its .xml extension, is a static HTML fragment generated by EDGAR's XSLT template for the EFFECT form; it is semantically redundant with the raw XML and is included so that the dataset mirrors exactly what sec.gov serves to a human reader.

There is no SGML header wrapper, no separate filer header file, no image attachment, and no exhibit directory. Every accession folder in the dataset has the same three-file shape.

The primary_doc.xml document

The raw submission is a small, flat XML document rooted at <edgarSubmission>. The top-level fields describe the notice itself, and a single nested <effectiveData> block describes the registration statement that was declared effective.

Top-level fields:

• schemaVersion — EDGAR's XML schema version for the EFFECT submission type; X0101.
• submissionType — always the literal string EFFECT.
• act — the Securities Act section under which the underlying registration was filed; 33 (Securities Act of 1933), since EFFECT is issued only for Securities Act registrations and post-effective amendments.
• testOrLive — EDGAR submission mode; production notices carry LIVE.

The <effectiveData> block carries the substantive payload:

• finalEffectivenessDispDate — the date of effectiveness in YYYY-MM-DD form.
• finalEffectivenessDispTime — the time of effectiveness in 24-hour HH:MM:SS form. Values cluster at a small number of staff release slots (commonly 10:00, 12:00, 16:00, and 16:30) because the notices are generated in scheduled batches rather than at arbitrary moments.
• form — the form type of the underlying registration statement (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, N-4, N-6, and their post-effective-amendment variants such as S-3/A or POS AM, among others).
• filer/cik — the ten-digit zero-padded CIK of the registrant whose statement became effective.
• filer/entityName — the registrant's legal name as carried on EDGAR.
• filer/fileNumber — the Securities Act file number of the underlying registration (for example 333-289242). This is the only pointer back to the registration statement; the accession number of that statement is not present in the XML.

For fund- and insurance-style registrants filing on forms such as N-4 and N-6, <filer> additionally carries a <seriesClassContractData> child whose <existing> element identifies the specific series and class/contract covered by the effective registration. This nested block contains seriesId (S-prefixed), seriesName, classContractId (C-prefixed), and classContractName. Operating-company notices omit this sub-block entirely.

The metadata.json document

metadata.json is a flat JSON object that mirrors and enriches the XML. Its keys are:

• formType — always "EFFECT".
• accessionNo — the dashed accession number of the EFFECT notice (for example "9999999995-25-003264").
• effectivenessDate and effectivenessTime — copied from the XML's finalEffectivenessDispDate and finalEffectivenessDispTime. effectivenessTime is absent when the source is missing.
• filedAt — an ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone offset recording when EDGAR posted the notice. EFFECT notices are typically posted in an overnight batch rather than at the effectiveness timestamp itself, so filedAt often lags effectivenessDate/effectivenessTime by several hours.
• registrationForm — the form type of the underlying registration statement, mirroring the XML's effectiveData/form.
• description — the constant string "Form EFFECT - Notice of Effectiveness".
• id — an internal record identifier.
• linkToFilingDetails, linkToHtml, linkToTxt — URLs pointing respectively to the XSLT-rendered view on sec.gov, the EDGAR filing index page (-index.htm), and the complete submission text wrapper.
• linkToXbrl — empty.
• documentFormatFiles — an array of three document references (the XSLT-rendered view, the raw XML, and the complete .txt submission) with sequence, size, documentUrl, and type. size is a string and is blank for the rendered view.
• dataFiles — an empty array.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — the JSON mirror of the XML's optional seriesClassContractData. Empty for operating-company notices; populated for fund or separate-account notices with series, name, and a classesContracts array of { name, classContract } objects.
• entities — an array carrying the registrant as a single filer object. Fields include cik, companyName (suffixed " (Filer)" as it appears in the EDGAR header), fileNo, irsNo, fiscalYearEnd (in MMDD form), stateOfIncorporation (a two-letter US state code or an EDGAR country code such as E9 for the Cayman Islands), act ("33"), type ("EFFECT"), filmNo, sic (numeric code plus industry label, for example "2834 Pharmaceutical Preparations"), and tickers (an array that may carry multiple symbols). The synthetic SEC filer entity (CIK 9999999995) is stripped from this array so that entities[0] is the registrant whose statement was declared effective rather than the SEC itself.

The XSLT-rendered view

xslEFFECTX01/primary_doc.xml is an HTML fragment produced by EDGAR's XSLT template for Form EFFECT. It renders a centered SEC header, the title "Notice of Effectiveness", and a short two-column table showing effectiveness date and time, underlying form type, registrant CIK (hyperlinked to EDGAR company search), registrant name, and file number (hyperlinked to EDGAR file-number search). It contains no information that is not already in primary_doc.xml; its role in the record is to preserve the exact human-readable view served by sec.gov.

Included content

Each record includes the raw EDGAR XML submission, the XSLT-rendered HTML view of that submission, and the normalized JSON metadata object. Between these three files the record captures every substantive field in an EFFECT notice: the effectiveness date and time, the underlying registration form, the registrant's CIK, legal name, and file number, any series/class/contract identification for fund-style registrants, and the registrant's EDGAR entity header (SIC, state of incorporation, fiscal year-end, tickers, IRS number, film number).

Excluded or separate content

Image files are excluded from the dataset by design; in practice EFFECT notices do not carry images, so the exclusion has no material effect on informational content. The underlying registration statement itself is not included in an EFFECT record; the notice only cross-references it by file number. Readers who need the registration's prospectus, exhibits, or financial statements must join to the separate S-series, F-series, or N-series filing via the registrant CIK and file number. The accession number of the underlying registration statement is not embedded in the notice and is not recovered as a dataset field.

Stability of structure over time

EDGAR began distributing EFFECT notifications electronically in May 2006, which defines the earliest boundary of the archive. Unlike registrant-prepared forms that have accreted new disclosure items over successive rulemakings, Form EFFECT has retained a minimal, stable structure throughout its electronic history: a single flat XML submission with one nested effectiveness block, at schema version X0101. Because the form carries no narrative disclosures, no financial statements, and no exhibits, there have been no rule-driven expansions to its required content. The only structural variation within the record shape is the presence or absence of the seriesClassContractData sub-block, which reflects whether the underlying registration covers a fund series and class/contract rather than a change in the form's design over time.

Interpretation and extraction notes

Several features of the record require care when extracting or joining data:

• The filer of the notice is always the SEC (CIK 9999999995), not the registrant. Any join keyed on the submission-header filer will group all EFFECT notices under a single synthetic entity. To identify the affected registrant, use effectiveData/filer/cik in the XML or entities[0].cik in the JSON.
• The underlying registration statement is reachable only through the file number (effectiveData/filer/fileNumber in the XML, entities[0].fileNo in the JSON). The notice does not carry the registration's accession number, so joining to the registration statement requires a separate lookup against EDGAR's file-number index or the registrant's filing history.
• filedAt in the JSON reflects the EDGAR posting time of the notice, which often lies hours after the effectiveness timestamp in effectivenessDate / effectivenessTime. The two timestamps should not be used interchangeably when reconstructing the sequence of corporate events around effectiveness.
• Effectiveness times are bucketed into a handful of staff-release slots (commonly 10:00, 12:00, 16:00, 16:30) rather than arriving continuously through the day; analyses that treat effectivenessTime as a precise clock reading should account for that batching.
• registrationForm and effectiveData/form capture the form of the underlying registration, not the form of the notice itself. A value such as S-3/A or POS AM indicates that an amendment to a previously effective registration was declared effective, not that the notice is itself an amendment.
• Fund-style effectiveness records require reading the seriesClassContractData / seriesAndClassesContractsInformation sub-blocks to know which specific series and classes of an investment product the effectiveness covers; the top-level entityName alone is insufficient.
• The XSLT-rendered file carries an .xml extension but is HTML content. Tools that dispatch on extension should be configured to treat xslEFFECTX01/primary_doc.xml as markup for display rather than as a parallel XML data source.
• act is stored as the numeric Securities Act section (33) rather than a descriptive label; string-equality joins against human-readable act names will not match without normalization.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Form EFFECT is unusual on EDGAR: the "filer" is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission itself, not a registrant, issuer, insider, fund, manager, or third-party agent. Each notice memorializes that the SEC has declared a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement or post-effective amendment effective.

Two SEC divisions of origin

Two SEC divisions produce these notices, split by the nature of the underlying filing:

• Division of Corporation Finance issues EFFECT notices tied to operating-company and other non-investment-company registrations, typically Forms S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4, and their post-effective amendments. Underlying registrants include domestic corporate issuers, foreign private issuers on F-series forms, real estate issuers on S-11, business-combination filers on S-4/F-4, and employee benefit plans on S-8.
• Division of Investment Management issues EFFECT notices tied to registered investment company filings, predominantly Forms N-1A (open-end funds), N-2 (closed-end funds and BDCs), N-14 (fund business combinations), N-8B-2 and S-6 (unit investment trusts), and their post-effective amendments.

The registrant whose registration statement is being declared effective is named within the notice (by name and CIK) but is the subject of the notice, not its author. EFFECT records should not be treated as filings by the issuer.

When a record is created

EFFECT notices are event-driven, not periodic. A record is generated when any of the following occurs:

• Staff-accelerated effectiveness under Section 8(a) and Rule 461, granted after comments are resolved and upon request of the registrant and managing underwriter.
• Automatic effectiveness under Section 8(a) after the statutory waiting period runs.
• Effectiveness of a post-effective amendment, including amendments that update prospectuses, add securities, or, for funds, launch new series or share classes.
• Immediate effectiveness by rule, such as Rule 462(b) for additional-share registrations, Rule 462(e) for WKSI automatic shelf registrations, and Rule 485(b) for qualifying open-end fund post-effective amendments.

Each record carries, at minimum, the registrant name and CIK, a reference to the underlying registration statement or post-effective amendment being declared effective (via the Securities Act file number), and the effective date and time where relevant. Pairing an EFFECT notice to its subject filing requires following the file-number reference, not matching on CIK alone.

Timing conventions reflect SEC internal processing rather than registrant deadlines. Acceleration orders are commonly released in late-afternoon batches (around 4:00 p.m. ET) on business days so underwriters can price after market close. Rule-based and automatic effectiveness notices post to reflect the rule-driven effective moment. Rule 462(b) and WKSI automatic shelf registrations notices reflect effectiveness coincident with the underlying filing. There is no amendment regime for EFFECT notices themselves; corrections are handled operationally.

EFFECT is an administrative EDGAR publication mechanism, adopted in May 2006 to replace mailed paper effectiveness orders. It is not a statutory disclosure obligation imposed on anyone.

Important distinctions

• SEC-authored, not registrant-filed. Treating EFFECT records as issuer filings will misclassify the reporting population.
• Two division-of-origin populations. Corporation Finance notices (Rules 461, 462, 430A/B/C) and Investment Management notices (Rule 485(a)/(b) and Investment Company Act procedures) cover structurally different filings. Separating operating-company from fund effectiveness requires keying on the underlying filing's form type.
• One registrant, many notices. A single registration statement can generate many EFFECT records over time as post-effective amendments are declared effective — especially for fund complexes adding series or classes.
• Only positive effectiveness. Stop orders, refusal orders, and registration withdrawals (RW, AW) are separate form types and are not part of this dataset.
• No pre-May-2006 corpus. Registration statements effective before May 2006 exist on EDGAR back to 1993, but their effectiveness was communicated through paper orders and letters, not an EFFECT form type.
• Publication event, not filing trigger. No registrant action causes an EFFECT notice to exist; the SEC's own effectiveness action does.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form EFFECT is a staff-generated event notice that timestamps when a Securities Act registration statement or post-effective amendment becomes effective. It carries almost no substantive content of its own, so the most useful comparison targets are the filings it references, the amendment types whose effectiveness it does or does not record, and the other staff- and Commission-issued records that surround the review process.

Securities Act registration statements (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-1, F-3, F-4)

These are the substantive filings whose effectiveness EFFECT announces. They contain the prospectus, risk factors, use of proceeds, underwriting terms, financial statements, and exhibits. EFFECT, by contrast, is a short machine-readable notice carrying only registrant identifiers, a reference to the underlying filing via the Securities Act file number, and the effective date and time. Use the registration dataset for offering terms, issuer financials, and legal disclosure; use EFFECT only to learn when that filing became legally usable for sales. The two are joined by CIK and file number.

Investment company registration statements (N-1A, N-2, N-4, N-6)

These fund-industry analogues generate the highest volume of EFFECT notices because open-end funds continually update their registrations. The underlying forms contain fund prospectuses, SAIs, fee tables, and investment policies; EFFECT records only when the Division of Investment Management declares them or their post-effective amendments effective. EFFECT again serves purely as a timing and lifecycle signal that must be linked back to the N-series filing.

Post-effective amendments (POS AM, POS EX, 485APOS, 485BPOS)

The relationship here is mechanism-dependent. POS AM and POS EX generally require staff action, so EFFECT is their typical effectiveness record. 485APOS filings become effective automatically after a delay (commonly 60 or 75 days); 485BPOS filings are immediately effective on filing under Rule 485(b). For these Rule 485 paths, EFFECT is usually not issued, and the amendment filing itself is the effectiveness record. Researchers studying fund amendment effectiveness cannot rely on EFFECT alone.

CORRESP and UPLOAD

CORRESP (registrant correspondence) and UPLOAD (staff comment letters) document the review dialogue that precedes effectiveness. They share a lifecycle with EFFECT but not its content: CORRESP and UPLOAD are narrative letters on specific disclosure issues, while EFFECT is a terse structured terminal-event notice. A full review history typically requires all three: UPLOAD for staff comments, CORRESP for registrant responses, and EFFECT for the effective date.

Commission orders

Some effectiveness events are evidenced by formal Commission orders rather than EFFECT notices, including Section 12(d) orders, Investment Company Act exemptive orders, and other Commission-level actions. These are published as release numbers, order documents, or Federal Register notices and are not part of the EFFECT dataset. EFFECT covers only staff-declared Securities Act effectiveness by the Divisions of Corporation Finance and Investment Management.

Form 8-A (8-A12B, 8-A12G)

These register a class of securities under the Exchange Act, a different statutory regime with different effectiveness mechanics (often tied to exchange listing certification or an automatic waiting period). Their effectiveness is not recorded through EFFECT. For Exchange Act class registration timing, use the Form 8-A filing itself, not EFFECT. (Variant codes 8-A12B and 8-A12G distinguish between exchange-listed and over-the-counter registrations.)

Key differences

• Authorship: EFFECT is authored by SEC staff; nearly every comparison target above is registrant-authored (CORRESP, registration statements, amendments, 8-A) or Commission-authored (orders).
• Content: EFFECT carries only header metadata and an effective date; the other filings carry substantive disclosure or narrative correspondence.
• Scope: EFFECT covers only Securities Act staff-declared effectiveness since May 2006; it does not cover Rule 485 automatic effectiveness, Exchange Act registration, or Commission orders.
• Function: EFFECT is evidentiary and time-indexing; the others are substantive, responsive, or adjudicatory.

Boundary summary

Form EFFECT is one of the few EDGAR filing types authored by the SEC itself, and its sole purpose is to timestamp when a Securities Act registration or post-effective amendment becomes legally effective. Its value lies in chaining: joined by file number to the underlying S-, F-, or N-series filing, it converts a static registration corpus into a time-indexed lifecycle dataset. For any question about offering substance, use the underlying registration; for staff-declared effectiveness dates since May 2006, EFFECT is authoritative and has no close substitute.

Who Uses This Dataset

EFFECT notices mark the legal moment a registration statement or post-effective amendment becomes effective — the point at which securities can be sold. A small set of fields (effectiveness date and time, registrant CIK, SEC file number, and referenced form type) drives workflows across capital markets, legal, fund operations, compliance, and research.

Capital markets and syndicate desks

ECM bankers, debt syndicate desks, and transaction management teams confirm the exact moment an S-1, S-3, F-1, F-3, or S-4 has been declared effective so that IPOs can price, follow-ons can launch, and shelf takedowns can be executed. Syndicate operations key on the effectiveness timestamp to align pricing calls, final prospectus filings, and settlement with the legal requirement that sales occur only under an effective registration statement.

Securities lawyers and disclosure counsel

Issuer's counsel and underwriters' counsel use EFFECT records for prospectus delivery, Rule 172 access-equals-delivery analysis, closing mechanics, and bring-down diligence. The effectiveness timestamp and file number support closing opinions, Section 11 and Section 12(a)(2) liability analysis, and post-effective amendment tracking for shelf capacity restoration.

Deal trackers and league-table analysts

Analysts at financial data vendors and in-house market intelligence teams treat EFFECT notices as the authoritative "go-live" signal for primary market activity. They join effectiveness events to underlying S-1, S-3, S-4, F-1, F-3, 424, and 8-A records to classify deals (IPO, follow-on, shelf, exchange offer, de-SPAC, resale), assign underwriter credit, and populate historical league tables without scraping EDGAR in real time.

Fund registration and product teams

Mutual fund, ETF, closed-end fund, and variable insurance product teams rely on Division of Investment Management EFFECT notices to confirm when new funds, series, and share classes are sellable. Fund operations, transfer agency onboarding, NSCC setup, distribution platform coding, and marketing release all gate on the effectiveness timestamp, the trust CIK, the underlying N-1A, N-2, N-14, or post-effective amendment, and the 811- and 333- file numbers.

Issuer and underwriter registration managers

In-house securities counsel, treasury teams, and registration managers at issuers, plus transaction management and compliance operations at underwriters, monitor effectiveness of their own and peers' registration statements. Outputs include deal status dashboards, shelf capacity tracking, WKSI monitoring, and controls that block sales activity on a registration statement or shelf refresh that has not yet been declared effective.

Compliance, surveillance, and control room

Broker-dealer compliance, control room, and trade surveillance teams gate distribution participation, research restrictions, and Regulation M timing on effectiveness. Historical EFFECT data supports after-the-fact reviews mapping each registrant's effectiveness events against restricted lists, research blackout calendars, and distribution logs.

Enforcement, internal audit, and litigation support

Enforcement support staff, internal audit, and litigation consultants use EFFECT records to pin down when disclosure liability attached, when sales could lawfully occur, or when a specific prospectus supplement became operative. They join effectiveness timestamps and file numbers against 424 prospectuses, 8-Ks, Form 4 insider transactions, and trading data to build defensible regulatory timelines.

Academic and policy researchers

Researchers studying SEC review processes use the EFFECT date as the endpoint in filing-to-effectiveness analyses. Paired with the underlying S-1 or N-1A filing date, it yields a clean review duration measure; paired with UPLOAD and CORRESP, it supports studies of how comment rounds, amendments, and acceleration requests affect timing. Full 2006-to-present coverage makes panel and time-series work tractable.

Data engineers and retrieval-system developers

Data engineering teams use EFFECT as the join key between effectiveness events and the underlying registration statements, populating "effective as of" flags and validating pipeline completeness. Teams building retrieval and question-answering systems over SEC filings use the machine-parseable fields to ground answers to queries such as shelf effectiveness dates, IPO review times, and quarterly new-share-class launches, avoiding hallucinated effectiveness dates.

Specific Use Cases

Form EFFECT notices are narrow in content but operationally decisive. The following workflows show how the effectiveness timestamp, registrant CIK, file number, and underlying form type are consumed in practice.

Gating IPO pricing and follow-on launches

ECM syndicate operations teams monitor EFFECT notices for S-1, S-3, F-1, and F-3 filings matched to their live deal book by registrant CIK and file number. The effectivenessDate and effectivenessTime fields confirm that sales may legally commence, releasing pricing calls, 424 prospectus filing, and DTC settlement instructions. A deal status dashboard flips from "pending" to "effective" the moment a matching notice is ingested.

Tracking fund and share-class go-live dates

Mutual fund, ETF, and variable insurance product operations teams filter EFFECT records where registrationForm is N-1A, N-2, N-4, N-6, or a 485-series post-effective amendment and read the seriesAndClassesContractsInformation block to extract S-prefixed series IDs and C-prefixed class/contract IDs. Output feeds NSCC profile setup, transfer agent onboarding, fact-sheet publication dates, and distribution platform coding so that new share classes are sellable on the correct date.

Building filing-to-effectiveness review duration panels

Academic and policy researchers join entities[0].cik and entities[0].fileNo from each EFFECT record to the corresponding S-1 or N-1A initial filing in EDGAR, then subtract the registration's filed date from effectivenessDate to produce a review-duration series. Paired with UPLOAD comment letters and CORRESP responses on the same file number, this supports studies of how comment rounds, amendments, and acceleration requests compress or extend SEC staff review.

Shelf capacity and WKSI monitoring for issuer counsel

In-house securities counsel and treasury teams filter EFFECT records on their own cik where registrationForm is S-3, S-3/A, F-3, or POS AM, and use effectivenessDate plus fileNo as the anchor for shelf capacity tracking. The workflow produces controls that block takedown attempts on a shelf whose post-effective amendment has not yet cleared, and refreshes the three-year WKSI eligibility clock tied to the original shelf's effectiveness.

Control-room gating of Regulation M and research blackouts

Broker-dealer compliance and control-room teams consume EFFECT notices matched to participated syndicates via cik and fileNo, using effectivenessDate / effectivenessTime to trigger Regulation M restricted-period start, research analyst blackouts, and distribution participation flags. Historical EFFECT data drives after-the-fact surveillance reconciliations that confirm each distribution was gated on an effective registration.

Regulatory timeline reconstruction in enforcement and litigation

Enforcement support, internal audit, and litigation consultants pull EFFECT records by registrant cik to anchor when Section 11 and 12(a)(2) disclosure liability attached and when sales could lawfully occur. Joining the EFFECT effectivenessDate and fileNo against 424 prospectus supplements, 8-K disclosures, Form 4 insider transactions, and tape-level trade data produces a defensible chronology for enforcement responses and securities-class-action exposure analysis.

Grounding effectiveness answers in retrieval systems

Teams building question-answering systems over EDGAR filings index EFFECT records on cik, fileNo, registrationForm, and effectivenessDate so that queries such as "when did issuer X's 2024 shelf become effective" or "how many new N-1A share classes launched in Q1" resolve against structured fields rather than free-text extraction. This prevents hallucinated effectiveness dates when the underlying registration itself does not restate the date.

Dataset Access

The Form EFFECT Files Dataset can be accessed through a JSON index API, a full dataset archive download, or by downloading individual monthly container files.

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-effect-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types covered, container format, and file types), the download URL for the full dataset archive, and a list of all available container files with their individual size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. It is useful for monitoring which monthly containers have been refreshed in the most recent update run, so that only updated containers need to be downloaded on a day-by-day basis. This endpoint does not require an API key.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-68e6-a731-adaa56bf101d",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-effect-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form EFFECT Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-23T03:01:20.203Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "2006-05-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 151488,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 184993401,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["EFFECT"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          11
            "fileTypes": ["XML", "JSON"],
        

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            "containers": [
        

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              {
        

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                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-effect-files/2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          15
                "key": "2026/2026-04.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 1450321,
        

          17
                "records": 1123,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-23T03:01:20.203Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-effect-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every EFFECT filing from May 2006 to the present. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-effect-files/2026/2026-04.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP file instead of the full dataset. Replace the year and month in the path with the container of interest, as listed in the dataset index JSON. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form EFFECT — EDGAR's electronic notice of effectiveness for Securities Act of 1933 registration statements and post-effective amendments. Each notice is issued by the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance or Division of Investment Management and carries a single <effectiveData> payload at schema version X0101.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record represents one EDGAR EFFECT notice, keyed by a single accession number of the form 9999999995-YY-NNNNNN. Each accession folder contains three files: the raw primary_doc.xml submission, a normalized metadata.json projection, and an XSLT-rendered HTML view at xslEFFECTX01/primary_doc.xml.

Who files Form EFFECT?

The SEC itself is the filer — every submission is made under the synthetic staff CIK 9999999995. The registrant whose registration statement was declared effective appears inside the notice as the subject (via effectiveData/filer), not as the submitter, so EFFECT records should not be treated as issuer filings.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The archive starts on 2006-05-01, when EDGAR replaced mailed paper effectiveness orders with electronic EFFECT notifications, and extends to the present. Registration statements effective before May 2006 exist on EDGAR back to 1993, but their effectiveness was communicated through paper orders rather than an EFFECT form type and is therefore not part of this dataset.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Inside each container, every accession folder holds XML (the raw EDGAR submission and its XSLT-rendered HTML view, both with .xml extensions) plus a JSON metadata file. The dataset index is also available as a JSON endpoint for monitoring container refreshes.

How do I link an EFFECT notice back to the underlying registration statement?

The notice cross-references the underlying registration only by Securities Act file number (effectiveData/filer/fileNumber in the XML, entities[0].fileNo in the JSON); the registration's accession number is not embedded in the notice. Joining to the registration therefore requires a separate lookup against EDGAR's file-number index or the registrant's filing history, keyed on CIK plus file number.

Does Form EFFECT cover every effectiveness event on EDGAR?

No. EFFECT covers staff-declared Securities Act effectiveness by the Divisions of Corporation Finance and Investment Management. It does not cover Rule 485(b) immediately effective fund amendments, 485APOS automatic effectiveness, Exchange Act Form 8-A class registrations, or Commission-level orders such as Investment Company Act exemptive orders — those effectiveness mechanics are carried by the underlying filing itself or by separate order documents.