Since the earthquake in Japan, investors have become more optimistic even while unrest continues in the Middle East and fears keep increasing about the debt situation in Europe.

“Expectations of future volatility have plunged, but S&P 500 traders are paying up for protection on put options”, said Jaosn Goepfert, President of SentimenTrader. com, in a report he wrote on Thursday. “When we’ve seen this combination in the past, the market was within one to two weeks of a peak six out of seven times”.

According to him, this means that the overall instability should be low over the next 30 days, but that traders are bidding up prices in an effort to put options comparative to provisional call orders. He said it was not a good omen for the market overall.

In the last year, investors have put in around $265 million for exchange-traded notes that go up as the volatility of the stock market goes down, in an effort to find profits where others have lost out before them. This is because notes that are exchange-traded are a form of unsecured debt that has a value based on the performance of an index. On the other hand, exchange-traded funds are not back by issuer’s credit and hold assets.