Though he remains confident we’re in an “ongoing bull market,” Templeton Asset Management Chairman Mark Mobius says that fears over Dubai’s debt problems could well cause a significant setback.

"If Dubai were to default, it would cause a wave of defaults in other areas," Mobius says.

"A 20 percent correction is not unusual in such bull markets, that's quite possible. So we should be ready for that kind of correction. This may be the trigger to allow for the market to take a rest and pull back.”

“There’s no way that anyone can specifically predict exactly when and to what extent, but certainly there will be corrections along the way.”

Dubai, which borrowed $80 billion in a four-year construction boom to transform its economy into a tourism and financial hub, suffered the world’s steepest property slump in the recession.

Home prices fell 50 percent from their 2008 peak, according to Deutsche Bank.

The biggest near-term influence on the direction of risk appetite and global markets appears likely to be the Dubai debt crisis, according to Cliff Wachtel, chief analyst for AVAFX, an online trading site for global currency, commodity, and stock index trading.

“The request to delay repayment on its loans. . . confronts markets with what is potentially the largest sovereign default since the 2001/2002 when Argentina stopped payments on its government bonds,” Wachtel writes on the Seeking Alpha Web site.

“The Dubai default threat does not have the same fundamental complexities as its Argentina’s did; however, context and timing can be everything.”