It’s been quite some time since market fears concerning an imminent U.S. recession have been so strong. Ever since China slowdown fears sparked market concerns in August of last year, traders have been extremely jittery. Yet, despite weakness in China and Europe and a surprise Brexit vote last month, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY 1.49% is up 0.6 percent in the past year.

The irony when it comes to predicting a recession and a stock market crash is that low expectations for the market are typically a reliable contrarian indicator that the market could soon be on the rise.

Oppenheimer analyst Ari Wald noted this week that all the recent dips in the stock market have been met with a spike in the number of news stories that include the phrase “stock market crash.”

“For comparison purposes, there were significantly fewer occurrences of this through the topping process in 2007,” Wald noted. He added that market tops are typically marked by extreme investor optimism, which is far from the current state of market sentiment.

Bank of America analyst Savita Subramanian agrees…

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