NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - "No one rings a bell at the market bottom," the old cliche goes.

The point isn't just that precisely timing a rebound is nearly impossible. It's also that when "bottoms" do arrive, things have usually been so bad for so long that no one is feeling good enough to make the call.

Investors hoping for a big rally better hope the old cliche is wrong, because in recent days the bell-ringers have been out in force. Indeed, market strategists these days seem almost as obsessed with big bottoms as Sir Mixalot or the boys in Spinal Tap.

Long time bullish bell-ringer Abby Joseph Cohen argues in a recent research note that "earnings expectations have hit bottom" and that the S&P 500 is undervalued by about 20 percent. Salomon Smith Barney's Tobias Levkovich also predicts a decent rally, suggesting that current stock "valuations seem to be in line with previous bottoms."

Meanwhile, Banc of America Securities market strategist Thomas McManus, generally a pretty bearish sort, is ringing a tiny little bell, suggesting "a rally may develop in the near term that could carry the popular averages a few percent higher and help rebuild bullish sentiment." He's raising the weighting of stocks in his model portfolio up a few notches -- to a whopping 55 percent.

Even in the beleaguered tech sector some contrarians can point to signs of hope. Consider Nokia, which announced Tuesday that it expected earnings to hit earlier forecasts, but also lowered its forecast for second-quarter revenue.

Not particularly great news, but the stock did bounce more than 10 percent in early trading and sparked a mini tech-stock rally.

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It's not particularly noteworthy when stocks move up on good news. But when stocks move up on bad news, contrarians argue, that's a sign of good things to come. After all, when investors have reached the point of maximum pessimism -- on a particular stock or the markets in general -- the only place left to go is up.

Well, that's the theory, anyway. In practice, stocks rally in bear markets all the time, for good reasons and bad (or for no reason at all). In any case, the tech rally petered out by lunchtime, with the Nasdaq ending the day down a little more than 2 percent.

If you're really looking for clues as to when all the pain will end, I suggest looking at some recent advertisements, particularly a new set from Schwab.

The most controversial of the bunch -- and one that's been banned from CBS -- features the head of a brokerage house trying to pump up his troops for a busy day selling some worthless no-name stock. The rallying cry: "Let's put some lipstick on this pig." It's a clever ad -- sort of a rebuttal to Ameritrade spokespunk Stuart's "Let's light this candle."

Granted, Schwab probably should have been running these ads two years ago -- instead of those ads (remember them?) in which Charles Schwab himself snuck off to his office to make a few trades while Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" blared incongruously in the background.

But I still see them as a hopeful sign: If this sort of wild-eyed cynicism has made it into brokerage ads -- surely a lagging indicator if there is one -- then maybe, just maybe, the markets themselves are finally getting as cynical as they need to get before we can start seeing rallies that stick.

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