Is this thing on?

We all know the old trope about not shorting a dull market. Shorting in any sense has pretty much been a disaster for a year, but the "dull" part has become even more apropos. The most important ETF in the world, SPY, has had an intraday range of less than 0.5% for 3 consecutive days, on volume more than 15% below the 200-day average each day, all while hitting a new high. While every previous instance saw a negative return at some point (there were no signals prior to 2007), returns after the first couple of weeks tended to be positive.