Catching Up

After spending way too much time in New Jersey for the holiday's I'm now back and left having to reconfigure workspaces and watchlists lately after losing most of it to a recent system upgrade.  But it feels good getting back into the swing of things.
The markets are regaining some vigor now that we're starting a new year.  Compared to the micro-range drift we were experiencing for most of December. Yesterday stopped a lot of shorts out, while today faked a lot of longs out.  You  have to shake out the rug before deciding where it will go:
Yesterday being a bullish bar, long's were eager to trade a breakout, resulting in a mild sell-off early on when that breakout failed.  Price found support around the 50% retracement measured off of the previous day's High to Low:

A few TICK divergences:

SPYland

The SPY currently sits in an island after printing two low-volume, narrow range, stars. After the close we almost eked-out a positive close for 2010.
Selling off the highs today occurred in a similar fashion as it did yesterday, following a bearish engulfing and tweezer top pattern. We saw covering near the previous day's low, keeping us above Monday's gap. In hopes that it will help me react faster in realtime, I'll highlight some hindsight observations. Below is a 1minute chart, broken up in two sections, the early morning and later afternoon. Some key levels to watch include;
PDL = Previous Day's Low
PDH = Previous Day's High
and the Open
This morning we had an active premarket that based around the 112.35 area. The opening test of this level was quickly lifted and we got an immediate test of the PDH.
We came close to testing the Opening price (never actually hit exactly) and strong volume carried price higher after a few minutes. The problem I have is I tend to assume strong volume on a down move (especially coming off of highs where the daily chart currently stands) means that strong volume = selling pressure. However, perhaps watching the T&S will help clue us in to what's really going on, besides, price hesitated at this level for 3 minutes without any further down side bias.
We made another quick move to the PDH, got sold again, retrace (78.6%) again on strong volume, and immediately work higher. We based at the PDH and into an ascending triangle and finally got a pop higher but the overhead resistance just seems to be keeping price at bay up here.
Later in the day we came back under the PDH, and then just fell apart after testing key levels.