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Bankruptcies and Debt Defaults Reported to the SEC
Form 8-K filings reporting a bankruptcy or a debt acceleration or default trigger, all SEC filers, 12-month totals
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
Original Form 8-K filings by every SEC registrant, counted by filing date; amendments are not counted and a filing made jointly by a parent and its subsidiaries counts once. Private companies do not file 8-Ks.
How often public companies tell the SEC they have filed for bankruptcy or that a default has made their debt come due early. The two counts surge together in recessions and credit squeezes and are available within days, well ahead of court statistics.
What this chart reads
- Bankruptcy 8-Ks, Trailing 12 Months (SEC, All Filers)as “Bankruptcy or receivership (1.03)”latest 2026-09-01
- Debt Acceleration 8-Ks, Trailing 12 Months (SEC, All Filers)as “Acceleration or default trigger (2.04)”latest 2026-09-01
Sources
Bankruptcy 8-Ks, Trailing 12 Months (SEC, All Filers). Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR: the item codes each company lists on its Form 8-K (EDGAR submissions data, https://www.sec.gov/edgar/sec-api-documentation), counted by Palanor. SEC: "Information presented on sec.gov is considered public information and may be copied or further distributed by users of the web site without the SEC's permission."
Debt Acceleration 8-Ks, Trailing 12 Months (SEC, All Filers). Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR: the item codes each company lists on its Form 8-K (EDGAR submissions data, https://www.sec.gov/edgar/sec-api-documentation), counted by Palanor. SEC: "Information presented on sec.gov is considered public information and may be copied or further distributed by users of the web site without the SEC's permission."
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.