The recent influx in the number of alts compared to the number of miners out there is making the entire market go down in my opinion. I'm going to paraphrase Bilbo from the Lord of the Rings and say the current situation is kind of "like butter scraped over too much bread". The supply of miners haven't increased at the same rate as new altcoins are being launched.

This is probably the beginning of what people refer to as "the Altpocalypse" - a lot of junkcoins will die off and people will find their way back to the historically steady alts like LTC. The last few weeks in altcoins have held nothing but scam launches and failed launches, and people are getting really tired of it. We've already seen a huge increase in LTC difficulty (or maybe this is because of the elusive scrypt-ASICs?).