Business

With Bill Ackman's Pershing Square increasingly becoming a levered bet on the fate of Valeant, which moments ago, ahead of its investor day, cut both its revenue and profit forecasts for both the quarter and the full year as follows:

Q4 2015 Revised Guidance

• Total Revenues previously $3.25 - $3.45 billion now $2.7 - $2.8 billion
• Adjusted EPS* previously $4.00 - $4.20 now $2.55 -$2.65
• Adjusted Cash Flow from Operations* previously greater than $1.0 billion, now greater than $600 million

Full Year 2015 Revised Guidance

The day has come when the boxed-in Fed has no choice: with the vast majority of the market expecting a rate hike, Yellen has to deliver or suffer a crushing confidence blow like no other. And deliver she will, with expectations that said hike will be "as dovish as possible", which however as we explained yesterday, is not really possible. For now however, the market is desperate to convince itself that just as more easing and more QE were bullish for the market, so rate hikes are just as bullish.

The transportation sector just keeps getting worse. Even after today’s uptick, the Dow Jones Transportation Average is back where it was in April 2014, and down 18% from its peak a year ago. Within this transportation sector is freight, a gauge of the goods-based economy, which is having a rough time.

Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

Grant Williams returns this week to set the context for this week's FOMC meeting, where the Federal Reserve is widely expected to hike interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. To say he is very skeptical of the Fed's ability to continue to control market forces much longer is a gross understatement:

There’s a lot to be worried about going into 2016 both in terms of financial markets and in terms of geopolitical concerns. 

We outlined the risks that pervade capital markets earlier today on the way to noting that the sellside penguin brigade seems to believe that somehow, nothing can derail the market’s momentum going forward. Here are the potential landmines investors face going into the new year: