I understand the distinction between Ripple and XRP, and it is certainly true that XRP has its own fair share of good news, along with Ripple... but that rarely if ever seems to translate into the sort of price movement we would see for other coins.
Not sure why this is, or how much the token-dumping by Ripple plays a part... but regardless, XRP still has a really solid use case and looks good for the long-term.
My guess: really really rich people see potential, and manipulate price so they could buy large amounts cheap
This could certainly be the case given that banks are the principal target users, so not necessarily just rich people buying as individuals, but also people buying as representatives of banks.