Worries about China's economy roiled markets following the devaluation of the yuan in August 2015 and at the start of 2016.

Credit and Leverage
"Leverage is high and credit is slowly tightening, while appetite for equity issuance may also be drying up," she writes, highlighting high levels of indebtedness among S&P 500 companies once financials and tech are removed from the equation.

Elections
The upcoming U.S. presidential election could provoke an "uncertainty shock and a slowdown in business investment" that brings about higher volatility, warns Subramanian.

The Fed
The central bank's interest rate forecasts suggest that the Federal Reserve will hike rates much more aggressively than investors expect over the next two-and-a-half years, which could bring about a loss of risk appetite, says Subramanian.

However, it's difficult to see the Fed being much more aggressive than the market anticipates if top line growth among major U.S. firms is indeed so difficult to come by and Chinese data turns particularly sour.

Seasonality
To adapt a phrase from T.S. Eliot, September has been the cruelest month for investors in U.S. equities — the only one in which the median return has been negative, going back to 1928.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.

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