Today’s Essential Eight items”

1. Outbreaks - Shanghai declared that it has halted community spread in the entire city, Beijing has not locked down but it has shut one of its biggest seafood markets, likely due to transmission from the outbreak in Tianjin.

2. Wang Yang and Liu He talk to tech firms, don't say anything new - From the brief official report on the meeting there are no indications anything was said different than what has been said for the last couple of months. Optimists may see it is a sign of a relaxation of the crackdown on the platform tech firms, I am not yet convinced.

3. Missing bond data - Bloomberg reports that data on bond trades by overseas investors have been missing for several days. It could be a glitch, but given that recent data have shown outflows of foreign capital the smart money will likely assume something else is going on. Data showing foreign outflows is definitely not positive energy, though if the authorities did this intentionally they are breathtakingly m…