Schwab’s Kleintop: 5 Developments Investors Missed While Watching Greece

Investors focused on events in Greece over the past week may have missed unrelated developments that could be at least as influential on the direction of global stock markets in the second half, according to Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab.

Greek voters on Sunday decisively rejected austerity measures following the failure of Athens and its creditors to reach an agreement.

“In our view, the negative consequences are likely to be limited outside of Greece,” Kleintop said Monday.

Separately, Bill Gross of Janus Investments suggested that Greece’s exit from the euro might be the “best-case scenario.”

Kleintop laid out five developments that some market watchers likely overlooked in the runup to the weekend referendum vote.

For one, the eurozone’s Purchasing Managers Index, a measure of sentiment among manufacturing firms in Europe, went up again in June to 52.5. This metric has been steadily rising since November, Kleintop said, and is not showing any sign of negative spillover from the Greek drama.

Meanwhile in China, the national average new home price rose in May for the first time in more than a year, following steady improvement in the magnitude of price declines this year, Kleintop reported, citing the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Worried about falling housing prices in China, investors have recently been focused on a potential property bubble and overbuilding leading to “ghost cities,” he said.