(MONEY Magazine) – To make the dissemination of company info more equitable, the SEC enacted Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) last October. It forbids firms from releasing news to analysts and institutions before making that info available to the public. We asked Gruner, who heads an Internet investor relations firm about Regulation FD's impact so far.

Q. How has FD affected company behavior?

A. A small percentage of companies are saying, "We're going to restrict our contact. We may even cancel our earnings conference call," but most are saying, "We're going to have our conference call broadcast live. We're going to allow individual investors to ask questions."

Q. And are individual investors better informed?

A. Certainly they're becoming aware that they can get access that wasn't previously available to them. Nike, for example, provided a live webcast for its annual analyst meeting in which 400 Power Point slides were presented. This is something the individual investor had no access to six months ago.