U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

In a case of supreme poetic justice, the SEC probe into Valeant which was reported on Monday and which led to a 20% plunge in the price the company's shares and resulted in Pershing Square's -19.9% performance through the end of February, was started by Valeant itself following its request of an SEC investigation into short-seller Citron's claims which made the rounds last fall, and which were among the numerous catalysts that precipitated the historic drop in the price of VRX stock.

It has been nearly six years since Zero Hedge proudly began collaborating with Nanex and Eric Hunsader (recall first from June 2010: "How HFT Quote Stuffing Caused The Market Crash Of May 6, And Threatens To Destroy The Entire Market At Any Moment") who has been one of the most vocal critics of everything this website has also stood against: rigged, manipulated markets, and corrupt and captured regulators and government officials.

With markets happy to put February in the history books because it marked the fourth consecutive monthly decline in global stocks, we move on to March 1st, which doubles down as 'Super Tuesday' in the US when Trump's presidential candidacy will almost certainly be sealed and a day in which stocks decided to join the super fun by super surging overnight on nothing but bad global macro and economic which however was promptly ignored and instead the focus was on ongoing central bank intervention and even more jawboning.

Over the weekend, our friend John Gavin at Probes Reporter revealed something disturbing to Valeant longs, namely that "New Data Now Confirms Valeant’s Undisclosed SEC Investigation." This is what the report said:

Over a decade ago, Henry Blodgett was barred from the securities industry for promoting dot com companies which he personally though were a "piece of crap." And while nothing has changed since then, and sellsiders dutifully pump companies which deserve to be dumped, but refuse to do so over fears of ruining relationships with management - as a reminder, the only function sellside research provides to the buyside community is arranging one on one meetings with CEOs during which material inside information is often disclosed - today for the first time in years, the SEC fined and suspended a n