Put down the champagne glasses and curb your enthusiasm for the seventh anniversary of the bull market. That’s because something quite ominous appears to be brewing in the options market.

The CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX) might be back down to the upper-teens. But the so-called “Fear Index” just made its own version of a “death cross,” according to Russell Rhoads, head of education at the CBOE’s Options Institute.

That doesn’t bode well for the market.

In technical analysis, a “death cross” usually occurs when the 50-day moving average falls below the 200-day moving average. Technicians see this at as sign that things will get worse.

But the VIX, which measures expected volatility over the following month in the S&P 500 (^GSPC), tends to move in the opposite direction as the overall market.

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“The VIX is considered a ‘fear index’ with respect to option trading on the S&P 500,” explained Rhoads. “When traders are concerned about downside in the equity market, as indicated by the S&P 500, they tend to buy put index options on the S&P 500 which pushes the implied volatility higher.”

For that reason, Rhoads sees the VIX’s shorter-term moving average move above its longer-term moving average – which would normally be viewed as a bullish move for any other security – as bad news for the market. In the past several days, the VIX’s 1-year moving average pushed above its 5-year average.

“The last time this happened back in 2007, a year later, the S&P 500 was down about 40%,” he warned. “For the overall equity market this could be a bearish sign.”

Other signs are also worrisome.

Rhoads also graphed the CBOE’s various volatility indices in a fashion similar to the way yield curves are drawn for the term structure of interest rates. While shorter-term volatility measures (^VXST and ^VIX) are at or below their 2015 averages, longer-term volatility indices (^VXV and ^VXMT) are elevated.

“Those can be taken as a market forecast that we're going to see increased volatility over the next three to six months or farther out in the 2016 calendar,” cautioned Rhoads.

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