It's all voodoo, but if enough people buy into it then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
I remember in mid May lots of chartists made arguments that a bunch of things had just come together to stop the downward trend, bunches of lines were all coming together for the first time in months (I'm not an astrologer so it's above my understanding). Then boom on May 20th we had the run to $600 right as all these lines hit.
Self fulfilling prophecy, but I've learned to listen to a few of them for impact on longer multi-month cycles.
Gradual rise to test the ATH @$1.1k-1.2k by the end of 2015.
I think the one thing we can say for sure is whatever happens, it won't be "gradual" through end of 2015. Bitcoin is always stable, until it isn't.