For those of you who don't follow...

...the stock market closely,

...the Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the bigger of China’s stock exchanges, fell [to its lowest level yesterday] in almost a year. The measure [has] slid 21 percent from the close on Nov. 23, entering a bear market.

The Shanghai index has slid 19 percent this year, the world’s worst performer after Greece among the 93 gauges tracked by Bloomberg, on concern government will increase efforts to curb speculation in the property market, hurting economic growth.

I don't know who it was, exactly, that determined that a 20% pullback constituted a bear market, but the important point here is that China led the U. S. market down in 2007 and led it back up in 2009, so investors should be wary of these recent developments in the Far East.