, it will probably not come as a surprise that the world's second biggest economy has ground to a halt, its GDP set to post the first negative print in modern history. To everyone else who is just now catching up, we have some news: it's going to be bad."

Specifically, we said that ahead of official Chinese economic data which will soon start capturing the period when the coronavirus crippled the country's economy, Nomura's Chief China economist Ting Lu pointed out that China's Emerging Industries PMI (EPMI), which gauges momentum in the country's high-tech industries and is closely correlated with official manufacturing PMI, slumped to 29.9 in February (from 50.1 in January!), its lowest-print on record, which was a "pure reflection of the devastating impact of the COVID-19 outbreak."