NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Though many analysts believe Wall Street will stay stuck in its current rut at least through the November election, there are signs that a very short-term bounce in stocks may be due.

For one thing, volume in the biggest exchange traded fund (ETF), the Nasdaq 100 index tracking stock (QQQ: Research, Estimates), called "the Qubes" after its ticker symbol, has been above 100 million shares for eight straight days, an extraordinarily long stretch.

The last time the Qubes saw such volume was in mid-May, just before the market put in a short-term bounce, and the current surge in volume could point to another pop.

Typically, high volume in the Qubes and other index-tracking ETFs -- including S&P Depositary Receipts (SPY: Research, Estimates), commonly called "Spiders," and the DIAMONDS (DIA: Research, Estimates), which track stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average -- is a sign of great investor uncertainty.

When investors aren't sure which particular stocks or sectors are going to do well or poorly in the short term, ETFs can be a safe bet, whether they want to be short or long on the market.

And times of high uncertainty are often followed by a market bottom, and maybe a nice short-term bounce, as happened in May.

Meanwhile, one of the barriers to a bounce, according to many technical analysts, has been excessive bullishness on the part of many investors. The concern among some observers is that, without a wave of pessimism, stocks won't be able to find a bottom and climb higher.

But that may be changing. Many high-profile Wall Street analysts have been cutting their equity exposure and expressing worry about the performance of stocks in months to come.

And amateur traders have been aggressively shorting the market in eye-catching numbers, according to Jason Goepfert, technical analyst and CEO of Sundial Capital Research.

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Goepfert points to the New York Stock Exchange's measure of "odd lot" activity, sales of 100 shares or less, which he calls a "dinosaur" of a technical indicator that hasn't been fully reliable since the 1970s, thanks to the availability of option trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Still, odd-lot purchases have peaked in recent years just before broader market peaks -- just before the tech-stock bubble burst in the year 2000, for example -- while odd-lot sales have peaked just before market bottoms -- such as the short-term bottom in May.

Since technical analysts like to do the opposite of what the crowd is doing, the fact that odd-lot short sales in the past five trading days have averaged more than 1.5 million shares per day, the highest such volume in history, may be a hopeful sign.

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"It is a compelling piece of evidence that we may finally be seeing at least a short-term display of excessive pessimism," Goepfert wrote in a note on his Web site.

But Goepfert and other technical analysts are still doubtful that the market is ready to put in a longer-term bounce, since they still see signs of longer-term bullishness.

Other analysts agree from a more fundamental perspective -- namely, that stocks could stay range-bound until investors have more clarity about the health of the economy and corporate earnings, terrorism, oil prices and the presidential election -- to name a few.

"We're stuck in this narrow range until after the election," Kenneth Polcari, managing director of Polcari/Weicker, told CNNfn.