Stocks haven't done much in a while. Wednesday marked the eight-straight day that the had closed less than 1 percent above or below its prior closing price.

Ominously, the last time the market staged this long a period of quiescence was in early August — shortly before stocks took a gut-wrenching tumble.

Now, as then, "we are at a precarious position," Erin Gibbs of S&P Investment Advisory said Wednesday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."

"We're trading at fairly high valuation and earnings growth doesn't look that good, so any big shocks — disappointment from China, any movement from the Fed — could send us into those highly volatile markets once again," Gibbs said.

As the market has slipped into a period of calm, the amount of volatility expected over the next 30 days — as measured by the CBOE Volatility Index, or the VIX — has fallen dramatically.