In my weekly updates of major worlds markets, one of the charts includes an overlay of the amazing bubble in the Shanghai Composite Index. In this commentary we’ll build an overlay of four major bubbles across market history to see the variety of shapes a bubble can take. But first let’s take a long view of the index.

The next chart centers the Shanghai Composite. The peak is the center of a 3000-market day timeline. Markets are open approximately 250 days per year, so this is a snapshot of a little over eight-and-a-half years with plenty of room left to track the future behavior. The dramatic rise took place over about one year with a dramatic collapse of about the same duration. The symmetry of this these two years is astonishing and, as we’ll see, not necessarily characteristic of bubbles.

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Unless you have been asleep or hiding under a rock for the past five years, you already know that we are experiencing the worst real estate crisis that the U.S. has ever seen. Home prices in the United States have fallen 33 percent from the peak of the housing bubble, which is more than they fell during the Great Depression.

Those that decided to buy a house in 2005 or 2006 are really hurting right now. Just think about it. Could you imagine paying off a $ 400,000 mortgage on a home that is now only worth $ 250,000? Millions of Americans are now living through that kind of financial hell. Sadly, most analysts expect U.S. home prices to go down even further. Despite the “best efforts” of those running our economy, unemployment is still rampant. The number of middle class jobs continues to decline year after year, but it takes at least a middle class income to buy a decent home. In addition, financial institutions have really tightened up lending standards and have made it much more difficult to get home loans. Back during the wild days of the housing bubble, the family cat could get a zero-down mortgage, but today the pendulum has swung very far in the other direction and now it is really, really tough to get a home loan. Meanwhile, the number of foreclosures and distressed properties continues to soar. So with a ton of homes on the market and not a lot of buyers the power is firmly in the hands of those looking to buy a house.

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How to profit from the coming Greek default … Five trades to make before the euro implodes … You don’t exactly need a crystal ball to know what the biggest event in the financial markets of the next 12 months is going to be: Greece defaulting on its debts. This week Standard & Poor’s cut its rating on the country to CCC, the lowest of any nation in the world. Only last week we learned that Greek industrial production was down 11% year-on-year. Unemployment has risen 40% over the past year, and now stands above 16% nationally. – Matthew Lynn, Marketwatch

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Jeffrey Strain

The reason why you aren’t a millionaire (or on your way to becoming one) is really quite simple. You probably assume it’s because you aren’t earning enough money, but the truth is that for most people, whether or not you become a millionaire has very little to do with the amount of money you make. It’s the way that you treat money in your daily life.

Here are 10 possible reasons you aren’t a millionaire:

10. You Care What Your Neighbors Think
If you’re competing against them and their material possessions, you’re wasting your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your wealth.

9. You Aren’t Patient
Until the era of credit cards, it was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today. If you have credit card debt because you couldn’t wait until you had enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.

8. You Have Bad Habits
Whether it’s smoking, drinking, gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money that could go toward building wealth. Most people don’t realize that the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost. Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.

7. You Have No Goals
It’s difficult to build wealth if you haven’t taken the time to know what you want. If you haven’t set wealth goals, you aren’t likely to attain them. You need to do more than state, “I want to be a millionaire.” You need to take the time to set saving and investing goals on a yearly basis and come up with a plan for how to achieve those goals.

6. You Haven’t Prepared
Bad things happen to the best of people from time to time, and if you haven’t prepared for such a thing to happen to you through insurance, any wealth that you might have built can be gone in an instant.

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Jeffrey Strain

Saving money isn’t all about whether or not you know how to score screaming bargains.

It has more to do with your attitude toward money.

Just think of those who don’t fit the filthy-rich stereotype. People like Warren Buffett.

As explained in the book The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, personal finance has as much to do with people’s traits as it does with money. Many millionaires, in fact, have frugal ways.

Understanding how personal traits can influence your finances is an essential ingredient for building wealth.

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