Form S-6 Files Dataset

The Form S-6 Files Dataset is a complete electronic corpus of Form S-6 and Form S-6/A registration statements filed on EDGAR by unit investment trusts (UITs) since January 1994. Each record corresponds to a single EDGAR submission identified by its 18-digit accession number and bundles the trust's full prospectus — cover page, trust organization, investment objectives, deposited-securities schedule, fee and expense tables, distribution arrangements, risk factors, tax-matters disclosure, and certified statement of financial condition — together with a structured metadata.json sidecar describing the EDGAR submission envelope, filer entity, document manifest, and canonical source URLs. Form S-6 is the Securities Act of 1933 registration statement used to register the units offered by UITs that are themselves registered as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 on Form N-8B-2; Form S-6/A covers pre-effective and post-effective amendments. Records are delivered as monthly ZIP containers and are sourced from sponsored UIT programs that file equity, fixed-income, and hybrid trust series — but not from variable annuity (Form N-4) or variable life (Form N-6) separate accounts, which file under different forms.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset captures every Form S-6 and Form S-6/A submission accepted by EDGAR from January 1994 to the present. Form S-6 is the registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933 used by unit investment trusts to register the units they offer to the public. UITs are a distinct category of registered investment company defined under the Investment Company Act of 1940; they hold a fixed, generally unmanaged portfolio of securities and issue redeemable units representing undivided interests in that portfolio. Because a UIT has no board of directors or investment adviser actively rebalancing the portfolio, its disclosure regime is purpose-built: the trust must first register itself as an investment company on Form N-8B-2 (the 1940-Act registration statement of unit investment trusts), and then register the units it sells to the public under the 1933 Act on Form S-6.

Form S-6 is structurally a "wrapper" form — it incorporates by reference much of the underlying N-8B-2 registration and supplements it with the prospectus delivered to investors, fee tables, current portfolio composition, distribution arrangements, and a certified statement of financial condition of the trust. Form S-6/A is the same instrument used to file amendments, including pre-effective amendments that add or update content before the registration becomes effective and post-effective amendments that update the prospectus for a continuously offered or rolling series of trusts.

Records are grouped into monthly ZIP containers keyed by filing month under a <year>/<year>-<month>.zip path scheme. Each container holds individual accession-numbered folders, and each folder contains a metadata.json plus the registration-statement document. The dataset distribution format set includes TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF: JSON is the metadata sidecar; HTML is the dominant body format for modern records; TXT covers the earliest 1990s filings whose prospectus body is plain ASCII inside the SGML envelope; and PDF rows are permitted by EDGAR but rarely used by UIT filers for the primary S-6 document.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record represents

One record in the Form S-6 Files Dataset corresponds to a single Form S-6 or Form S-6/A submission accepted by EDGAR, identified end-to-end by its 18-digit SEC accession number. A record is materialized on disk as a folder named after that accession number (the dashed accessionNo with the hyphens removed) and contains exactly two artifacts: a metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission envelope, and a single .htm registration statement that carries the full prospectus text. The dataset unit is therefore the filing-as-package — one accession number, one prospectus document, one structured metadata sidecar — scoped to the form types S-6 (initial registration statements) and S-6/A (pre-effective and post-effective amendments). The unit of granularity is always the individual accession-numbered folder inside the monthly container.

Content layers inside a record

Each accession-numbered record folder contains two layers of content:

1. metadata.json — a flat JSON object capturing EDGAR's submission-level metadata: form type, accession number, acceptance timestamp, filer entities, document manifest, and a set of canonical EDGAR URLs pointing back at the source filing.
2. The S-6 / S-6/A registration statement — a single .htm file wrapped in EDGAR's SGML document envelope, with the full prospectus body serialized as inline HTML inside the <TEXT> block.

Image attachments that the filer originally bundled with the submission (logos, signature graphics, fund-family marks, counsel and trustee marks such as cac.jpg, chapman.jpg, morganlewis.jpg) are intentionally excluded from the dataset on disk, although their identities remain visible in the documentFormatFiles[] manifest carried by metadata.json. There are no separate exhibit files broken out in the per-record folder; Form S-6 is in practice a single-document submission, and the dataset reflects that.

metadata.json structure

metadata.json is the structured anchor of every record. Its top-level fields fall into four conceptual groups.

Submission identity and timing

• formType — the literal "S-6" or "S-6/A".
• accessionNo — the SEC accession number in dashed form (e.g. 0001445546-25-006540); the same value with hyphens stripped is the folder name.
• description — the human-readable form description supplied by EDGAR (e.g. "Form S-6 - Registration statement for unit investment trusts", with [Amend] appended for S-6/A).
• filedAt — an ISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset (e.g. 2025-10-01T12:17:13-04:00) capturing the EDGAR acceptance time.
• id — an opaque 32-character content hash used as a stable internal record identifier.

Canonical EDGAR URLs back to the live submission

• linkToFilingDetails — direct URL of the primary registration HTML on sec.gov.
• linkToTxt — URL of the full SGML/text submission bundle.
• linkToHtml — URL of the EDGAR filing-index page.
• linkToXbrl — URL of any XBRL instance; empty for S-6, which is not subject to inline-XBRL financial-statement tagging.

Document manifest

• documentFormatFiles[] — every primary document item EDGAR exposes for the submission. Each entry carries sequence, size (bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, description, and type. type is typically S-6 (or S-6/A) for the registration document itself, GRAPHIC for embedded images, and a blank value for the trailing "complete submission text file" pseudo-document EDGAR appends to every submission. GRAPHIC rows remain in the manifest for completeness even though their bytes are not materialized inside the dataset folder, allowing downstream consumers to reconstruct the original submission's file inventory or fetch the omitted images directly via documentUrl.
• dataFiles[] — reserved for structured data attachments (XBRL, R-files); empty for S-6.

Filer-entity block

• entities[] — the array of EDGAR-recognized filers on the submission. Each entity carries companyName (with the role suffix (Filer) appended), cik, fileNo (the 333-prefixed 1933-Act registration file number assigned to the offering), irsNo, stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd, act (always "33" for S-6, reflecting the 1933 Act registration nature of the form), type (the form type), and filmNo (the EDGAR film number identifying the specific submission). For sponsor-driven UIT families, the entity is typically the trust series itself rather than the sponsor; multi-entity submissions are uncommon for S-6.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] — reserved for filings that use EDGAR's series/class identifier system; structurally present but empty for S-6 records.

The S-6 / S-6/A document and its SGML+HTML wrapper

The single .htm file in each record folder is not pure HTML — it is EDGAR's SGML document envelope with HTML serialized inside it. The file opens with a small SGML preamble naming the document, transitions into a standard HTML body, and closes the SGML envelope. The shape is:

          1
          <DOCUMENT>
        

          2
          <TYPE>S-6
        

          3
          <SEQUENCE>1
        

          4
          <FILENAME>s-6.htm
        

          5
          <DESCRIPTION>INITIAL REGISTRATION STATEMENT
        

          6
          <TEXT>
        

          7
          <HTML>
        

          8
            <HEAD>...</HEAD>
        

          9
            <BODY>
        

          10
              ... full prospectus body ...
        

          11
            </BODY>
        

          12
          </HTML>
        

          13
          </TEXT>
        

          14
          </DOCUMENT>
        

The <TYPE> tag echoes the form type; <SEQUENCE> numbers the document inside the submission (1 for the primary S-6 document); <FILENAME> is the on-disk filename, which is not standardized across filers — common patterns include s-6.htm, s6wraps.htm and s6awraps.htm (the a infix marking an amendment), and filer-specific patterns embedding internal series codes such as b1015250s6.htm, adt2315-s6.htm, or g1021250s6.htm. <DESCRIPTION> carries the filer's free-text label for the document (typically "INITIAL REGISTRATION STATEMENT", "REGISTRATION STATEMENT", or amendment-specific phrasing). The substantive content of the filing — the prospectus — is the HTML inside <TEXT>...</TEXT>. The <HEAD> is often minimal (frequently an empty <TITLE>); document-level styling and layout live inline in the body.

Typical content of an S-6 prospectus

Within the inline HTML body, an S-6 prospectus assembles, in approximately this order, the disclosure elements that the SEC and the prospectus-delivery rules require for a UIT.

• Cover page. The exact registered name of the trust (often a specific dated series — e.g. "Trust XYZ Series 2025-3"), the sponsor/depositor's name and address, the date of deposit, the title and amount of units being registered, the aggregate offering price, the proposed maximum offering price per unit, and the registration-fee calculation under Rule 457. A facing-page signature block for the depositor commonly appears here.
• Trust organization. Identification of the depositor (sponsor), trustee, and evaluator; the form of the trust agreement and indenture; the state of organization; the fixed nature of the portfolio; and the duration and termination provisions of the trust.
• Investment objectives and policies. A description of the trust's stated objective (current income, capital appreciation, tax-exempt income, exposure to a defined index or theme), and the strategy or selection criteria the sponsor used when the portfolio was deposited. Because UITs are unmanaged, this section also describes the limited circumstances under which the portfolio may be changed.
• Portfolio composition. A schedule of the securities deposited at the date of deposit, typically by issuer, CUSIP, principal amount or share count, coupon and maturity (for fixed-income UITs), credit rating where relevant, redemption or call features, and aggregate cost and current value. Equity UITs enumerate constituent companies and deposit weights.
• Fees and expenses. Standardized fee tables disclosing the sales-charge structure (initial, deferred, creation and development), organization costs, the trustee's annual fee, supervisory and evaluation fees, and any sponsor reimbursement caps. An expense example projects total dollar costs over standard holding periods.
• Distribution arrangements. The mechanics by which units are offered to the public — sponsor-as-underwriter relationship, secondary-market activities, breakpoints and volume discounts, dealer concessions, and any rollover privileges from prior series of the trust.
• Risk factors. Disclosures specific to the UIT structure (lack of active management, dependence on portfolio quality at deposit), the underlying asset class (interest-rate, credit, equity, sector, foreign, currency, tax risks), and the trust's structural features (market price vs. NAV, redemption mechanics, sponsor default).
• Tax matters. Federal income tax treatment of the trust and unitholders, including grantor-trust or regulated-investment-company classification as applicable.
• Certified statement of financial condition of the trust. A balance sheet of the trust as of the initial date of deposit, signed and certified by an independent registered public accounting firm. For sponsors that file recurring series, this is often a representative or pro forma statement covering the new series.
• Signatures and consents. The depositor's signature block satisfying Section 6(a) of the Securities Act, together with the auditor's consent and any other required consents.

For Form S-6/A, the same skeleton is reused but the disclosures are updated to reflect the matters being amended — typically updated portfolio data, refreshed fee tables, an updated financial-condition statement at a more recent date, or curative changes prompted by SEC staff comment.

Relationship to Form N-8B-2 and incorporation by reference

A Form S-6 record cannot be read in isolation from the trust's Form N-8B-2. The S-6 prospectus is structured to incorporates by reference much of the detailed organizational and operational disclosure already on file under the 1940 Act on Form N-8B-2 — for example, the full text of the trust indenture, detailed descriptions of trustee duties, and standing terms of the trust. The S-6 itself focuses on offering-specific content (the present series, current portfolio, current fees, current financial condition). The dataset captures the S-6 / S-6/A submission as filed; it does not bundle the underlying N-8B-2 registration, which lives in a separate EDGAR submission and is not part of this dataset's accession-keyed record set.

Exhibits and attachments inside documentFormatFiles

Although Form S-6 is in practice a single-document filing, EDGAR's submission model still permits multiple items per accession, and metadata.json faithfully records each one in documentFormatFiles[]. The type field discriminates among them:

• type = S-6 (or S-6/A) — the primary registration statement, and the only document materialized on disk.
• type = GRAPHIC — embedded images such as logos or signature graphics. These appear in the manifest with a documentUrl pointing to the file on sec.gov, but the bytes are deliberately omitted from the per-record folder.
• Trailing pseudo-row with a blank type and a single-space sequence — EDGAR's "complete submission text file", the SGML concatenation of every document in the submission. It is exposed by EDGAR but is not a real exhibit and should be filtered when iterating over real documents.

Conventional 1933-Act exhibits (legal opinions, consents, indentures) are not typically broken out on S-6 because the underlying instruments live with the N-8B-2; when they do appear, they show up as additional rows in documentFormatFiles[] and are addressable through documentUrl.

Included content

Each record contains the structured submission metadata in metadata.json plus the full text of the registration statement in the inline-HTML document. Together these cover the cover page, full prospectus body, fee and expense tables, portfolio schedule, distribution arrangements, risk factors, tax-matters disclosure, certified statement of financial condition, signatures, and any inline tabular content. The metadata also exposes back-pointers to the original EDGAR submission URLs, the document manifest with sizes and types for every item the filer submitted, and the filer-entity record with CIK, file number, IRS number, state of incorporation, fiscal year end, film number, and 1933-Act designation.

Excluded or separate content

The dataset excludes image files (JPG/PNG/GIF graphics that appear as GRAPHIC items in the manifest); they remain listed in documentFormatFiles[] but their bytes are not materialized in the per-record folder. Because Form S-6 incorporates by reference much of Form N-8B-2, substantial portions of the trust's organizational disclosure live outside this dataset in the N-8B-2 submission, which is not part of the Form S-6 Files Dataset. Subsequent amendments are stored as separate accession-numbered records under form type S-6/A rather than being merged into the original S-6 record; reconstructing the latest effective prospectus for a given series requires walking the chain of S-6 and S-6/A accessions for that filer and series. XBRL instance files are not produced for S-6 (the corresponding linkToXbrl is empty and dataFiles[] is empty), so structured financial-statement data is not part of any record. Correspondence, comment-and-response letters, and EDGAR header-only meta items are likewise outside the per-record file set.

Evolution of required content and structure since 1994

The disclosure backbone of Form S-6 has been stable since the modern UIT regime was put in place: it has always been a 1933-Act registration form keyed to a separate 1940-Act registration on Form N-8B-2, and the core prospectus elements — trust organization, investment objective, portfolio schedule, fees, distribution, financial condition, signatures — have been required throughout. Several refinements have shaped the content of more recent records, including the standardized fee-table format and expense-example presentation that now governs UIT prospectuses, sales-charge disclosure conventions reflecting deferred and creation-and-development charges that became prevalent in unit-trust offerings, and increasingly granular risk-factor disclosure tracking the asset classes UITs have moved into (sector equity baskets, closed-end fund baskets, international exposures). For sponsors that file recurring series of similar trusts, the prospectus convention has converged on a "wrap" prospectus that incorporates most boilerplate by reference and updates only series-specific content — reflected in document filenames such as s6wraps.htm and s6awraps.htm. None of these changes altered the form's overall section ordering, but they materially changed the density and structure of the fee and risk sections within the prospectus body.

Evolution of data format since 1994

Form S-6 records span the full EDGAR era from January 1994 onward, and the on-the-wire format of the prospectus document has evolved with EDGAR's general filing technology. The earliest filings are plain ASCII text inside the SGML envelope — a single <DOCUMENT> block with <TYPE>S-6, <TEXT> containing fixed-width text rather than HTML, and tabular content rendered with whitespace-aligned columns. These records correspond to the TXT file type found in the dataset. From the late 1990s and through the 2000s, filers transitioned to HTML inside the SGML envelope, which is the dominant shape of records today: the <TEXT> block contains a complete <HTML>...</HTML> document, prospectus tables are real HTML tables, and typography is preserved. The SGML envelope itself (<DOCUMENT><TYPE>...<SEQUENCE>...<FILENAME>...<DESCRIPTION>...<TEXT>...</TEXT></DOCUMENT>) has remained constant across both eras, so a single parser keyed on the SGML markers can extract the inner document regardless of vintage. PDF attachments are permitted by EDGAR and appear in the dataset's file-type set, but UIT filers rarely use PDF for the primary S-6 document, so PDF rows are uncommon in practice. Inline XBRL and standalone XBRL never applied to Form S-6 — the form is exempt from the inline-XBRL financial-statement tagging regime — so the structured-data slots in metadata.json (linkToXbrl, dataFiles[]) are empty across the entire history of the dataset.

Interpretation and extraction notes

A handful of nuances matter when consuming records:

• Folder name vs. accession number. The 18-digit folder name is the dashed accessionNo with the hyphens removed; both forms map to the same EDGAR submission, and the dashed form is what EDGAR's URL scheme uses.
• Filer entity is the trust series. The entities[] block typically names the trust series as the filer rather than the sponsor; joining records into sponsor-level views requires resolving CIKs against EDGAR's filer hierarchy, since sponsors often operate hundreds of separate trust-series CIKs.
• Pseudo-row in the manifest. documentFormatFiles[] includes the EDGAR "complete submission text file" entry with a blank type and a single-space sequence; filter it out when iterating over real documents.
• SGML-wrapped HTML. The .htm document is wrapped in SGML, not naked HTML — code that assumes a clean HTML root must either trim the SGML preamble and trailer or parse from the inner <HTML> tag.
• Amendments are siblings, not children. S-6/A records sit alongside the original S-6 in their own accession folders; linking an amendment to its base filing requires matching on fileNo and entity CIK rather than on accession number.
• Image references resolve to absent bytes. Image filenames referenced inside the prospectus body correspond to GRAPHIC rows in the manifest whose bytes are deliberately absent from disk; if visual fidelity is required, the corresponding documentUrl on sec.gov can be used to fetch the original.
• Incorporation by reference. Because S-6 incorporates by reference into N-8B-2, the prospectus text often refers to provisions ("the Indenture", "the Trust Agreement") whose full text is not contained in the record itself; complete legal interpretation requires resolving these references against the underlying N-8B-2 submission.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who files the record

The legal registrant on every Form S-6 is a unit investment trust — a category of investment company defined in Section 4(2) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, distinct from management companies (mutual funds, closed-end funds) and face-amount certificate companies. Because a UIT has no board of directors and no investment adviser, the registration statement is prepared and signed by the entities that organize and distribute the trust:

• The UIT itself, almost always a specific series of a master trust (for example, "XYZ Equity Trust, Series 123"). The series is the issuer of the units being registered.
• The sponsor / depositor, which creates the trust, deposits the initial portfolio, and signs the registration on the trust's behalf. Sponsors are typically broker-dealers or asset managers running sequential UIT programs.
• The trustee (a bank or trust company) that holds portfolio assets, processes distributions and redemptions, and is referenced in exhibits.
• The principal underwriter / distributor, which sells units to the public. In sponsored programs the underwriter is usually affiliated with the sponsor.
• Officers and directors of the depositor, who supply the signatures the Securities Act requires of the registrant's principal officers (the trust itself has none).

UITs filing on Form S-6 cover equity UITs (fixed strategy or index baskets), fixed-income UITs (municipal, taxable, and government bond trusts), and certain hybrid trusts. Insurance-product UITs do not file S-6: variable annuity separate accounts use Form N-4 and variable life insurance separate accounts use Form N-6, even though those accounts are themselves UITs registered under the 1940 Act.

When the record is created or required

Form S-6 is event-driven, not periodic. Filings arise from Section 5 of the Securities Act (no offers without a registration on file; no sales until effective) and from the obligation to keep the prospectus current while units are offered. The principal triggers are:

• Initial registration of a new UIT or new series. A sponsor launching a new series files an S-6 to register its units. For a brand-new trust, the trust's 1940 Act existence is registered first or contemporaneously on Form N-8B-2; the S-6 is the 1933 Act offering document covering the units.
• Registration of additional units. Offering units beyond the amount originally registered, or extending the offering period, is effected through a new S-6 or a post-effective amendment.
• Prospectus and financial statement updates. Continuously offered UITs and trusts in secondary-market maintenance must keep the prospectus current — annual update of the certified statement of financial condition, refreshed portfolio, fee table, risk and tax disclosures — through post-effective amendments filed as S-6/A.
• Material changes. Changes in sponsor, trustee, distribution arrangements, fees, or permitted portfolio substitutions trigger an S-6/A so that purchasers receive a current prospectus.
• SEC staff comments. Pre-effective amendments responding to staff review are filed as S-6/A.

There is no fixed quarterly or annual calendar tied to fiscal year-end. Cadence is driven by offering activity and prospectus-currency obligations: an initial S-6 must be effective before any sale; pre-effective S-6/A amendments cover the staff-review period; post-effective S-6/A amendments cover annual financial-statement rollovers and any material change during secondary-market maintenance.

Regulatory framework

Form S-6 sits at the intersection of two statutes and two operative rules:

• Securities Act of 1933. Form S-6 is the prescribed 1933 Act registration form for UIT units. Its content requirements largely incorporate the substantive disclosure of Form N-8B-2 and add 1933 Act prospectus elements (plan of distribution, fees, tax treatment, risk factors, statement of financial condition).
• Investment Company Act of 1940. UITs register their existence as investment companies under Section 8(a) on Form N-8B-2. N-8B-2 registers the trust; S-6 registers the units. The S-6 prospectus operates as a "wrap" that presents the N-8B-2 disclosure in S-6 format alongside the additional 1933 Act content — the standard structure visible in the documents in this dataset.
• Rule 485 (Securities Act). Provides the post-effective amendment mechanics used to update the registration statement. Rule 485(a) amendments are subject to staff review and become effective on a delayed basis; Rule 485(b) amendments become effective immediately or on a designated date and are limited to specified non-material updating purposes (annual financial-statement rollovers, conforming changes, certain non-material disclosure updates).
• Rule 487 (Securities Act). UIT-specific rule that lets the registrant designate the date and time at which an initial Form S-6 for a new series becomes effective, subject to defined conditions. Rule 487 is heavily relied on by sponsored programs that launch many sequential series because it produces a predictable effective date for each new trust.

S-6 versus S-6/A

• S-6 is the initial registration statement. In sponsored UIT programs each new series is launched on its own S-6.
• S-6/A is any amendment — pre-effective (responding to staff comments before the registration goes effective) or post-effective (annual financial-statement updates under Rule 485(b), additional units, sponsor or trustee changes, other material updates). The two form types are distinguishable in the dataset by form type alone.

Important distinctions

• Open-end mutual funds and ETFs register on Form N-1A; closed-end funds on Form N-2. They are management companies, not UITs, and never use S-6.
• Variable annuity and variable life separate accounts that are technically UITs register their contracts on Form N-4 or Form N-6, not S-6. The S-6 dataset therefore reflects traditional non-insurance UIT products.
• Face-amount certificate companies and operating companies use other Securities Act forms (S-1, S-3, S-4, S-8, S-11, or N-2-style regimes); none are available for UIT units.
• The registrant is the trust series, but the disclosure subjects include the sponsor, trustee, underwriter, and the deposited portfolio securities. The sponsor (a corporate entity) should not be confused with the registrant (the trust series).

The dataset begins in January 1994, reflecting the phase-in of mandatory EDGAR electronic filing for UITs in the early-to-mid 1990s. Pre-EDGAR S-6 filings exist on paper in SEC archives but are not part of this electronic dataset.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form S-6 sits at a narrow intersection: a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement reserved for unit investment trusts that have already registered as investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 on Form N-8B-2. Its closest neighbors are therefore (a) the 1940 Act registration it leans on, (b) other 1933 Act registration forms, (c) registration forms used by other investment-company structures, and (d) the prospectus and amendment filings that follow an S-6 through its post-effective life.

Form N-8B-2 — UIT registration under the 1940 Act

• Who files: the UIT (depositor on its behalf), once at trust formation.
• What is registered: the trust as an investment company under the 1940 Act — depositor, trustee, sponsor, indenture, fundamental policies, custodial arrangements.
• Line vs. S-6: N-8B-2 registers the entity; S-6 registers the units sold under the 1933 Act. S-6 incorporates much of N-8B-2 by reference and adds the prospectus, fee and distribution disclosure, financial statements, and signed exhibits. A UIT cannot offer units on N-8B-2 alone, and an S-6 cannot exist without a prior N-8B-2.

Form S-1 — general 1933 Act registration

• Who files: operating companies and other non-investment-company issuers.
• What is registered: equity, debt, or other securities under Regulation S-K and Regulation S-X line items (business, risk factors, MD&A, executive compensation, audited issuer financials).
• Line vs. S-6: same statute, different issuer class. S-6 issuers are passive UITs with a fixed portfolio and no active management, drawing disclosure content from N-8B-2 rather than Regulation S-K. S-1 substitutes operating-company narrative for the UIT prospectus, statement of financial condition, and portfolio schedule that define S-6.

Form N-1A — open-end management investment companies

• Who files: mutual funds and most ETFs (open-end management investment companies with redeemable shares).
• What is registered: combined 1933 Act and 1940 Act registration of continuously offered, redeemable shares of a managed fund.
• Line vs. S-6: N-1A registrants have an investment adviser, board, 12b-1 plan, and a managed (or index-replicated) portfolio that turns over. S-6 registrants are unmanaged trusts with a fixed portfolio and a defined termination date. None of the adviser/board/12b-1 disclosure exists on S-6.

Form N-2 — closed-end management investment companies

• Who files: closed-end management investment companies (managed companies issuing a fixed number of exchange-traded shares, typically not redeemable at NAV).
• What is registered: common shares, preferred, debt, rights, and shelf takedowns of a closed-end fund.
• Line vs. S-6: like N-1A, N-2 registers a managed company with a board and adviser. N-2 issuers also use shelf and follow-on offerings, debt, and preferred — none of which are part of UIT structure. S-6 trusts are series-issued, fixed-portfolio, and unmanaged.

Form N-4 — variable annuity separate accounts

• Who files: insurance company separate accounts that fund variable annuity contracts and are organized as UITs under the 1940 Act.
• What is registered: the variable annuity contract and its sub-account structure.
• Line vs. S-6: the most easily confused neighbor — N-4 issuers are UITs but do not use S-6. The SEC channels insurance-product UITs onto N-4 because the disclosure (annuity terms, mortality and expense charges, surrender provisions, sub-accounts) diverges from the unit-trust-of-securities model. S-6 covers standalone retail UITs (equity, fixed-income, commodity-pool unit trusts from sponsors such as Invesco, First Trust, Advisors Disciplined Trust); N-4 covers insurance-wrapped UITs.

Form N-6 — variable life insurance separate accounts

• Who files: insurance company separate accounts funding variable life contracts, organized as UITs.
• What is registered: the variable life policy, including cost-of-insurance charges, death benefit options, and policy loan provisions.
• Line vs. S-6: same statutory entity (UIT) as S-6 and N-4, but the product wrapper is variable life. S-6 carries no insurance-policy disclosures; N-6 carries no fixed-portfolio unit-trust prospectus. Together S-6, N-4, and N-6 partition UIT registration without overlap.

Form 24F-2 — annual notice under Rule 24f-2

• Who files: open-end funds, UITs, and certain face-amount certificate companies that registered an indefinite number of securities and now true up fees on shares actually sold.
• What is disclosed: an aggregate sales figure and a fee calculation for the prior fiscal year — no prospectus or portfolio content.
• Line vs. S-6: complementary, not alternative. Form 24F-2 reports against Rule 24f-2: S-6 establishes what is offered; 24F-2 reports how much was sold and what fee is owed. Useful for fee-flow and net-sales analysis, useless for offering content.

Rule 497 and 497K — definitive prospectus filings

• Who files: registered investment companies (including S-6 UITs) after the registration statement is effective.
• What is filed: the definitive prospectus (Rule 497), prospectus stickers/supplements, and summary prospectuses (Rule 497K) actually delivered to investors.
• Line vs. S-6: registration vs. dissemination. S-6 is the registration statement; 497/497K capture the post-effective prospectus text and its in-period supplements. Text often tracks the S-6 prospectus closely, but mid-period supplements and summary versions do not always trigger an S-6/A. Full prospectus-text continuity over a UIT's life requires S-6 + 497 + 497K.

485APOS and 485BPOS — post-effective amendments under Rule 485

• Who files: N-1A, N-2, N-4, and N-6 registrants — not S-6 filers.
• What is filed: post-effective amendments that keep a single registration statement evergreen. 485APOS is filed under Rule 485(a) (delayed effectiveness, material changes); 485BPOS under Rule 485(b) (immediate effectiveness, annual updates and non-material changes).
• Line vs. S-6: mechanical and population-based. UIT sponsors do not maintain an evergreen S-6; they file a new S-6 for each new series of the trust and use S-6/A for pre-effective amendments. The 485 streams therefore capture the rolling-update lifecycle of managed funds and insurance separate accounts, while S-6 captures series-by-series new offerings. The two should not be combined as equivalent amendment streams.

Boundary summary

The Form S-6 Files Dataset covers 1933 Act registration statements (and pre-effective amendments) for fixed-portfolio retail unit investment trusts. It is not interchangeable with any neighbor: N-8B-2 registers the trust entity (1940 Act side); S-1 serves the same statute for non-investment-company issuers; N-1A and N-2 cover managed open- and closed-end funds; N-4 and N-6 cover insurance-wrapped UITs; 24F-2 carries fee accounting only; 497/497K carry post-effective prospectus delivery; and 485APOS/485BPOS belong to the evergreen amendment regime that S-6 filers do not use. Reconstructing a UIT's full lifecycle requires pairing S-6 with N-8B-2 (formation), 497/497K (post-effective prospectuses), and 24F-2 (sales and fees); within its own slot, S-6 is the authoritative source for the prospectus-level offering record of retail unit investment trusts.

Who Uses This Dataset

Different professions anchor to different fields of the record — the fee table, the deposited-securities schedule, the investment-objective statement, the certified statement of financial condition, the exhibit list, and the structured metadata.json keys (accession number, CIK, form type, filing date, document inventory).

UIT sponsor product and structuring teams

Product strategists at sponsor and depositor firms track competitor S-6 and S-6/A activity to time their own series launches. They pull metadata.json filer/CIK/filing-date fields into daily monitoring pipelines, then read the prospectus investment-objective section, deposited-securities schedule (CUSIPs, tickers, weights, units), and fees-and-expenses table (initial sales charge, deferred sales charge, creation and development fee, deferred sales charges, organization costs, supervisory and bookkeeping fees) to benchmark basket themes, fee levels, and rollout cadence. Output: launch dashboards, fee-benchmark studies, and structuring inputs for the next-series prospectus.

Buy-side and sell-side packaged-products research

Analysts covering UITs, model portfolios, and basket strategies extract the deposited-securities schedule, stated selection methodology, sector/country breakdowns, and the comparison-of-public-offering-price disclosures. They reverse-engineer rules-based screens, measure overlap across competing trusts, and back-test strategy performance. Output: peer-comparison notes and quantitative thematic research.

Securities lawyers and disclosure counsel

In-house and outside counsel use prior S-6 filings as drafting precedent. They read risk-factor language, RIC and grantor-trust tax sections, the certified statement of financial condition, and the exhibit list (trust indenture, distribution agreement, legal opinions, evaluator's consents, accountant consents) to benchmark disclosure for new series and novel structures (defined-outcome, buffered, actively curated). The metadata.json form type (S-6 vs. S-6/A) and accession number drive precedent searches and amendment-history reconstruction.

Compliance and series-rollover governance

Sponsor compliance and product-governance teams managing rollover into successor series review fee-table evolution, sales-charge disclosure, the rollover-privilege description, and the trust agreement exhibit across the family of prior series. CIK plus accession number lets them assemble the full historical chain for disclosure-consistency review.

Wealth-platform and broker-dealer due diligence

Product-review committees at registered investment advisors and broker-dealers approving UITs for the platform shelf compare the fee table, investment objective, portfolio construction methodology, deposit date, mandatory termination date, and secondary-market/redemption mechanics. Output: product-approval memos and fee-transparency reviews under fiduciary and Reg BI workflows.

Academic and industry researchers

Researchers studying packaged-product economics use the 1994-forward corpus as a panel. They parse fee tables and deposited-securities schedules and join them to metadata.json filing dates to build longitudinal series on fee dispersion, sponsor concentration, and basket-theme cycles.

Data engineers and quant teams

Engineers ingest metadata.json (accession, CIK, form type, filing date, document inventory) to drive pipelines, then parse prospectus HTML/TXT to extract fee tables, deposited-securities schedules, and termination dates into internal UIT databases and coverage feeds.

LLM and RAG developers

Teams building financial retrieval and extraction systems use S-6 prospectuses as a structurally repeatable corpus (objectives, portfolio, fees, distribution, financial condition) for fine-tuning table extractors, benchmarking QA over packaged-product disclosure, and training section classifiers.

Trade-press and financial journalists

Reporters covering the UIT industry track filer name, filing date, prospectus front matter, investment-objective summary, and fee table to identify launch trends (thematic, ESG, defined-outcome, target-term) and unusual fee structures. Output: launch columns, annual industry round-ups, fee investigations.

Litigation support and testifying experts

Experts in UIT sales-practice, suitability, and trustee disputes pull the original S-6 or S-6/A by accession number to establish disclosure-as-of-date. They cite risk factors, fee disclosures, portfolio composition, and trustee/evaluator identities exactly as filed; preservation of every amendment and exhibit is essential evidentiary support.

Specific Use Cases

Concrete workflows the Form S-6 Files Dataset supports, anchored to specific record components.

Benchmarking sales-charge structures across UIT sponsors

A product strategist at a UIT sponsor compares competing series-launch economics. The team filters metadata.json for formType == "S-6" filed in the last 12 months, joins on entities[].cik to roll trust-series CIKs up to sponsor families, then parses the fees-and-expenses table from the prospectus HTML to extract initial sales charge, deferred sales charge, and creation-and-development fee per series. Output is a sponsor-by-sponsor fee distribution used to set the fee schedule on the next-series S-6.

Building a deposited-securities holdings panel

A buy-side analyst covering thematic UITs reconstructs basket overlap across competing trusts. From each S-6 prospectus body the workflow extracts the schedule of deposited securities (issuer, CUSIP, ticker, share count, deposit weight) and joins it to the trust name, sponsor CIK, and filedAt from metadata.json. The result is a longitudinal holdings panel used to compute pairwise basket overlap, identify crowded names, and back-test rules-based selection methodologies disclosed in the prospectus.

Reconstructing a series's pre-effective amendment chain for litigation

A testifying expert in a UIT suitability dispute needs the prospectus exactly as delivered on the deposit date. The workflow pulls every record matching the trust's entities[].cik and entities[].fileNo (the 333-prefixed registration number), orders the resulting S-6 and S-6/A accessions by filedAt, and uses each accession's HTML registration statement to cite risk factors, fee tables, and trustee/evaluator identities as of the operative date. Output is an exhibit set keyed to accession numbers for evidentiary submission.

Drafting precedent search for novel UIT structures

Disclosure counsel preparing a defined-outcome or buffered UIT searches prior S-6 prospectuses for analogous risk-factor and tax-treatment language. The workflow runs full-text retrieval over the inline-HTML <TEXT> body across the corpus, filters by form type and filing era, and returns precedent paragraphs (grantor-trust vs. RIC tax sections, structured-payoff risk disclosures, sponsor-default risk language) for adaptation into the new prospectus.

RAG corpus for packaged-product question answering

An LLM team building a retrieval system over UIT disclosure indexes the prospectus HTML body section by section (cover page, trust organization, investment objective, portfolio composition, fees, distribution, risk factors, tax matters, statement of financial condition). Section anchors plus accessionNo, cik, and filedAt from metadata.json form the chunk metadata. The output supports grounded QA on questions such as "what is the C and D fee on this series" or "when does this trust mandatorily terminate" with citations back to the EDGAR source URL in linkToFilingDetails.

Wealth-platform shelf approval and fee-transparency review

A broker-dealer product-review committee evaluating a UIT for the platform pulls the latest S-6 (or terminating S-6/A) by sponsor CIK, then extracts the fee table, investment-objective statement, deposit date, mandatory termination date, rollover-privilege description, and secondary-market mechanics from the prospectus. These fields populate a standardized approval memo used in Reg BI and fiduciary documentation; rejected items feed back into sponsor negotiations on fee breakpoints and dealer concessions.

Dataset Access

The dataset is accessible through three endpoints: a public index JSON for metadata discovery, a full archive download, and per-container monthly downloads. Filings span from 1994-01-01 to present and cover form types S-6 and S-6/A, packaged as monthly ZIP containers.

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s6-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, form types, container format, and file types), the full dataset download URL, and the list of all monthly container files. Each container entry includes its key (e.g. 2025/2025-10.zip), size in bytes, record count, updated timestamp, and a direct downloadUrl. Polling this endpoint allows you to detect which containers were refreshed in the latest run and selectively download only those that changed. This endpoint does not require an API key.

Example response:

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6906-9c73-1fbd5eb2543d",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s6-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form S-6 Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:54:09.628Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 56491,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 984762474,
        

          9
            "formTypes": ["S-6", "S-6/A"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          11
            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
        

          12
            "containers": [
        

          13
              {
        

          14
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s6-files/2025/2025-10.zip",
        

          15
                "key": "2025/2025-10.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 13818783,
        

          17
                "records": 154,
        

          18
                "updatedAt": "2026-05-08T02:54:09.628Z"
        

          19
              }
        

          20
            ]
        

          21
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s6-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container. This endpoint requires an API key passed as the token query parameter.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-s6-files/2025/2025-10.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP. The path after the dataset slug corresponds to the key field returned in the index JSON (e.g. 2025/2025-10.zip), so you can construct any container URL directly from the index response. This endpoint requires an API key passed as the token query parameter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What forms does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form S-6 (initial 1933 Act registration statements for unit investment trusts) and Form S-6/A (pre-effective and post-effective amendments to those registration statements). Both form types are mixed together in the dataset and distinguishable via the formType field in each record's metadata.json.

What does one record represent?

One record corresponds to a single Form S-6 or Form S-6/A submission accepted by EDGAR, identified by its 18-digit accession number. On disk a record is a folder named after the accession number (with hyphens removed) containing two artifacts: a metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission envelope and a single .htm file holding the SGML-wrapped registration statement and prospectus.

Who is required to file Form S-6?

Unit investment trusts that register units for public sale under the Securities Act of 1933 file Form S-6, with the registration prepared and signed by the sponsor / depositor on the trust's behalf. Sponsors are typically broker-dealers or asset managers running sequential UIT programs in equity, fixed-income, or hybrid asset classes. Insurance-product UITs (variable annuity and variable life separate accounts) file Form N-4 or Form N-6 instead and are not present in this dataset.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset begins on January 1, 1994 — reflecting the phase-in of mandatory EDGAR electronic filing for UITs in the early-to-mid 1990s — and continues to the present. Pre-EDGAR S-6 filings exist on paper in SEC archives but are not part of this electronic dataset.

How is the dataset packaged and what file formats does it use?

The dataset is delivered as monthly ZIP containers under a <year>/<year>-<month>.zip path scheme, each holding the accession-numbered record folders for that filing month. File types inside the records include JSON (the metadata sidecar), HTML (the dominant prospectus body format for modern filings), TXT (plain ASCII bodies in the earliest 1990s filings), and occasional PDF attachments.

How does this dataset differ from Form N-1A, N-2, N-4, and N-6 filings?

Form N-1A registers managed open-end mutual funds and most ETFs, Form N-2 registers managed closed-end funds, and Forms N-4 and N-6 register insurance-wrapped UITs (variable annuity and variable life separate accounts respectively). Form S-6 is reserved for fixed-portfolio, unmanaged retail UITs whose units are registered under the 1933 Act on top of a 1940 Act registration on Form N-8B-2. Substantively, S-6 carries the deposited-securities schedule, sponsor and trustee disclosure, and certified statement of financial condition that those neighbor forms do not.

Why are some files referenced in the prospectus missing from the record folder?

Image attachments (logos, signature graphics, fund-family marks, counsel and trustee marks) are intentionally excluded from the dataset on disk to keep records focused on the substantive registration content. Their identities remain visible in the documentFormatFiles[] manifest inside metadata.json with a type of GRAPHIC and a documentUrl pointing to the original file on sec.gov, so consumers needing visual fidelity can fetch them directly from EDGAR.