I generally hoard, and use 5% for small-time manual market making and the occasional opportunistic speculation.

I am sure there are some margin long/short swing traders here as well.  I am too fond of my hoard to risk it that way.  And yes, fib levels are helpful.

As for the volume: lots of bots and a couple of bitcoin whales are converting to XMR, trying to get a good price.  Keep in mind that the ambition of Monero to be the dominant private fungible unlinkable untrace-able currency is well under weigh to become a manifest reality.  The appeal to HNW individuals and international funding channels seems obvious enough and DNM adoption is sufficient to raise liquidity levels to a point where those uses becone practical.  Many of the radical upside potentials which bitcoin squandered with bad governance suddenly become achievable again, in Monero.  Rationally the only logical thing to do is get as many as you can and hold them as tightly as you can.  But day-traders dunning-kruger much.

It's much more than the standard pump-and-dump. Darknet markets have endorsed and are using Monero. Those are people who depend on private and untraceable currency. They wouldn't have chosen Monero if it wasn't the best option - they have too much to lose. As a result, the demand for XMR spiked, and as a result of this, so did the price.

As with pretty much all cryptos, I expect the price to be volatile. However, as darknet use grows, and as more people who simply want to keep their financial information private become aware that they may do so with Monero, I expect even more demand for XMR. When you throw in the upcoming features (GUI, sig, 0MQ, Kovri I2P), those should create even more demand.

So, I expect the price to be volatile, but with an overall upward trend for quite some time.

Did you try start with lower engine and memclock? 1200 engine is on the high side and not all graphic card can be pushed that hard. At least try 1000 and lower intensity.

try I 13, they work better with i 13 and lg 2