Yup, people expect the halving to have a bullish impact on the price, but things are different this time around as with every bull cycle in Bitcoin, with fundamentals being better and more adoption, etc. One thing that stands out to me this time, though, is that people saw how much the price of BTC grew from the last bull run to $20k and more people are anticipating this than ever in Bitcoin's history. There were fears that BTC could've completely collapsed in 2015 (that risk is now gone in most people's eyes in 2019), and few people really held from the lows of 2015 to 2017.