Bullruns are meant to be surprising. It can only be expected but determining when will it exactly happen is way impossible due to the lack of contistency of the market itself. This year, no recovery happen so people are looking forward next year but the problem is that we are lacking assurance that such thing will really happen. The best thing to do now is to be patient.
This is correct, bull markets take everyone by surprise, the same cannot be said about bear markets because bear markets appear after a bull market so they are not as surprising as bull markets that can literally appear out of nowhere, however that doesn't mean that bull markets happen without reasons, for example in the case of bitcoin the price had been stable for some time and then it began to slowly climb up for most of the year of 2017.
And finally when segwit was activated that was the signal that people needed to begin to buy bitcoin in large quantities once again because they felt this was a development that was very positive for the community and the technology and they were right.