Resolving the "Triangle" - Did We Breach to the Downside Yesterday?

Many adapt traders in the blogosphere and 'twittersphere' have been talking about the triangle forming in the charts the past month or so.  I have mostly been mentioning the top side of that shape - the series of lower highs, but as seen below with the orange lines indeed we have the triangle shape - lower highs on the top side after a peak, and higher lows on the downside.

[click to enlarge]

'Normally' when you break out of this triangle, you tend to see a significant move that follows the direction of the break.  Yesterday seemed to indicate that move will come to the downside.  Of course, true to course in this new paradigm market where strange things happened, in the closing minute of the day the S&P 500 rallied about 5 points upward, and this morning we are getting (of course) a gap up.  So I hesitate to trust much of the old rules of technical analysis nowadays since there seems to be an invisible hand that makes a lot of the old rules inept.  Those who were around last year remember a massive head and shoulders formation that should have led to a breakdown in the market - instead we got QE2 and we were off the races.

Anyhow, thought I'd point it out... even if it proves to be useless within days.... or hours.