S&P 500 on historic calm streak, is a storm coming?

I've talked about the need for stocks to consolidate here but we're at risk of having too much of a good thing.  Take a look at the last few days of the S&P 500 (^GSPC). What you see for the last 5 days is as close to absolutely nothing as you can get in a market of 500 stocks.

For one full week worth of trading days the market has failed to post a change of more than .1% on any single day. According to Walter Murphy Global Advisors that streak of tranquility is tied for the longest such run for the S&P 500 ever. Since 1928 Murphy says there have only been three other streaks of 5 days without a greater than .1% move.

Is that a bad thing? We'll know soon but there are a couple of reasons to be concerned. First, Murphy says the prior instances when this happened -- specifically 1956, 1965 and 1969 -- all marked intermediate tops. So history hasn't been kind to markets quite this dull.

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Another concern is that traders are getting restless. You can see that in the VIX (^VIX) which rose more than 5% yesterday just because it seemed like Japan was going into a recession and Russian President Vladimir Putin bailed on the G20. Nervous traders will tend to become sellers at crunch time, especially when they've got option protection.

This streak is going to end, probably today and for sure sometime this week. Best case scenario is a brief test of 2000 followed by one last thrust to the new year. Worst case is... well... worse. I'm still banking on long but don't take my word for it. We're almost at the end of a surprisingly strong year. The only way to blow it is to fall asleep at the wheel.