Back in July, Canaccord analyst Brian Reynolds put out a contrarian piece which broke with numerous conventional wisdom norms about the state of the market, key among which was that traders are not complacent, but rather - in light of collapsing trading volumes, something which has plagued bank income statements in the past 2 quarters - simply paralyzed, as they no longer have a grasp of financial "logic" when it is all superceded by central bank liquidity injections, and as such most trades feel fake, forced and just part of the FOMO charade to avoid losing one's job.

As Reynolds explained, "Investors are not complacent. Their stances range from extremely aggressive to bearish" and added that these "opposing forces have led to a compression of volatility. When stocks have rallied strongly, they have then been met with investor selling. When stocks sell off, the buybacks have picked up after the selling runs its course. That has been the case for more than eight years. Those forces have led to an equity bull market that moves higher in fits and starts, with some brief pullbacks from time to time.