asian markets were a sea of red except for china’s small gains while hong kong and the philippines were spared the carnage due to market holidays chinese equity markets posted slight gains in renminbi though cny was off 083 versus the us  closing at 672 as the us dollar surges it was a quiet weekend and monday except for premier li’s speech emphasizing employment against the backdrop of china’s first covid zero policy it wasn’t exactly a vince lombardi halftime motivational speech though he noted “promote the healthy development of the platform economy and drive more employment” weekend trade data shows the economic consequence of the policy as imports were off mainland volumes were very light highlighting investor sentiment as several widely held stocks by both domestic and foreign investors were off mainland media source yicai global reported that tiktok’s parent bytedance might list the chinese version of tiktok in hong kong rebranding itself douyin splitting the company into two entities would be an intelligent way to navigate the uschina political relationship the pcaob denied the reuters article on a china visit which is disappointing a mainland media source noted the clinical trial of sinopharma’s inactivated vaccine in hunan province hopefully the trial goes well shanghai shenzhen and star board managed small gains of 009 035 and 048 on volume 1159 from friday 62 of the 1year average there were 3356 advancing stocks and 1009 declining stocks value and dividend factors performed well today while larger companies underperformed in us  communication was the only positive sector 008 while discretionary 252 energy 172 staples 172 and financials 114 rare earth companies had a strong day while several widely owned names were off such as catl 199 kweichow moutai 229 china merchants bank 38 and byd 386 northbound stock connect was closed bonds rallied cny sold off versus the us  and copper was off