Too calm to rise?

Or just the calm before the storm

The stock market tends to peak when it's been chugging along quietly without much drama. On the flip side, bottoms happen when the market is full of fear and lots of short-term volatility. You can track this using behind-the-scenes market internals.

One indicator I created, called "CALM," shows how settled or unsettled the US stock market is. High CALM readings mean the market's been reasonably peaceful, while low CALM means a lot of noise and turbulence. Tops usually happen when the market's super calm, and bottoms when it's super loud. Right now, it looks too clam to stay at this level much longer. Shown by a turn of the CALM signal line crossing the upper band.