Stocks continue to bounce off early-April lows — but, in the grand scheme of things, have really gone nowhere this year. The Dow Jones Industrials (a good measure of the largest stocks on the board) are up just 1.2% as of Friday, while the S&P 500 is up 2%.

Most of the action this year has been overseas, as the iShares S&P Europe 350 Index ETF (IEV) is up 7%, the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index ETF (FXI) is up 21.8% and the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ) is up 15%. Even the long-suffering emerging markets are besting Wall Street this year, with an 8.9% gain so far for the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index ETF (EEM).

Now, 2% for the broad market is not horrible, of course. Anyone who came through the 2000-2002 bear market or the 2008-2009 bear market knows that good returns are not a given. But, still, for this late in an economic recovery, the performance of U.S. stocks is paltry.

You can spread the blame around — pointing at the higher U.S. dollar (which diminishes overseas sales), the expected rise in interest rates (looking at you, Janet Yellen), the plunge in oil prices (dimming big energy companies’ earnings), or simply rotation (from the relatively expensive U.S. markets to relatively cheap overseas markets) — but the bottom line is that U.S. stocks have just sort of ambled sideways.

At the same time, volatility has really crashed in a big way, with the S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) down 33.3%, as shown below.

To cut through the haze of investor emotion and find a clear path to profits, the CounterPoint Options system generally takes a contrarian view of the market in making its trade recommendations. At the moment, the system is recommending a call option on a VIX derivative, the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX).

Buy the VXX May $23 calls at $1.35 limit, good till canceled, for target $2.10. The ticker symbol is VXX 150515C00023000. There are multiple expiration dates available for the May series, so be sure you are buying to open the monthly calls that expire on May 15, 2015.

Jon Markman operates the investment firm Markman Capital Insights. He also offers a daily trading advisory service, Trader’s Advantage, and CounterPoint Options, a service that helps individual traders make steady, consistent profits with volatility-related instruments.