Based on last year/years bull run, what do you consider to be signals that indicates this kind of movement? Do you see these in nowadays' BTC/Altcoin markets?
Nope. We are still in 2015 of last Bitcoin cycle. Far from 2017, the year you are talking about.
yeah this is true. though the cycle is a lot shorter this time (~9 month bear market as opposed to ~14 month bear market last time), but yeah we're in the equivalent to the spring of 2015 right now.
Probably we'll be in a new bull market sometime in the next 1 - 5 months. End of Q1 2019 at the latest.
It's pretty random if you ask me. We don't know when the whales would start a snowball effect and pump the price to start fomo. It's hard to base when from past bull runs since what caused it then may very well not have the same effect now.
actually what you said, this mentality, is the reason why we have bubbles. people like you who think bitcoin is like a pump and dump altcoin that only rises because it is "pumped by whales" are always waiting for that "pump" to come and when it is already too late (eg. price over 10k last year) they start buying with FOMO and cause the bubble.
but as this mentality goes away we can see how the cycles become shorter and the bubbles less severe. like the current bear market being much shorter compared to the last one.