Good call in Feb 2009. The earliest person credible person I saw call this thaw was James Grant in March 2009. The others I could dismiss as cheerleaders and Federal Reserve groupies.
How did Grant know? Why did Warren Buffet lend Goldman Sacks 10 billion? My opinion is the powers that be layed out to them and others like them how much the Federal Reserve was going to juice the economy. IOW they had insider knowledge of a sort. IOW Buffet made a sure bet. He had the information to make that sure thing bet.
Besides The Fed pushing out torrents of fiat money the only other factor helping the economy in comparison to 2008 is the fracking revolution. I cannot think of any other sector that is doing better than 2007-2008 pre-crash. Meanwhile mountains of debt have been added everywhere to get to where we are today.
I was using Tradestation at the time and after a huge downside overreaction I checked the stock history and found that such moves corresponded with large upmoves. I thought it might be a short term up-play (6mos - 1yr), but it hasn't stopped. I did NOT predict this long term move.