If that is the case, this was starting to happening before the hack. The week before the hack the price deathly level at $20 for a few days. Completely flat. If this is happening, I think you overestimate the spread. I think they are bouncing us between $16.75 and $17. I believe someone big is cashing out at the $17 level, and picking up and coins he can at around $16.75.

Then again our google trends are in a lull,

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0

This has been highly correlative with price, see my post from a few weeks ago, the current lull does put us right at $17:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17318.0

I think the price will start moving up when our trend improves. As soon as bitcoin starts getting some noise in more mainstream places the price is going places.