I reckon a lot of retail traders were thinking like me last night - this thing is set up to run! There were some big buy trades along that plateau, but every time they happened, the selling matched and/or bettered the buying volume. There was about 5 instances of this. At first I thought it was bearish, but then decided they were trying to control the price at that level for a while longer. That was stupid.
Why would the banks want to keep the price at a plateau? How much liquidity are they going to capture by keeping it in a tight range? Virtually none. They pick up liquidity by pushing the price below old lows. When they have enough, they let it run up. I thought they had plenty of liquidity from the past week to take it higher (and they do - it will continue up), but just not yet.
So my mistake was to mix up my timeframes. Longer term bullish, short term correction. Happy that I saw the signs of a small correction last night, not so happy I misinterpreted it. Quite possible to big buys were faked by the banks to draw retail in, but I know how to spot that now.