It looks like the big spike we had earlier today was a big buyer trying to push the price up with little success.

Its seems to me that is a whale trying to start a rally. Given the current market circumstances, there is no need to panic buy such amount of coins, why executing that market order with big slippage if you can just place your bids, or execute smallish orders while ask side builds up?

Of course there are other explanations. It could be a whale who just don't care about losing +$10k in slippage, because his pockets are so very deep. Or just a noob whale that doesn't know how this market works and is afraid to miss the train. Or he may be someone knowing that huge news will hit the world soon and there is no time to buy slowly. Or maybe he doesn't even know how to place bids on Gox, don't noobs always buy their first coins with market orders?

All the above seems unlikely to me. This market is so tiny that an individual with a relatively small amount of cash  (few millions $) can become a market maker. I guess the vast majority of BTC whales never experienced the feeling of being a "whale" on grown up markets, so they like to play. The most likely objective would be to trigger some panic buying that would make $105 fall, which following TA would be a strong trend reversal indicator.

I'm not buying. The whale seems to be running low on ammo. Wait and see...