I'm sure there are whales or groups of investors who are trying to manipulate the prices of coins with low market cap. Such situations will always happen. However, the overall trend is improving and it looks like the bulls have come back to push the price for new ATH.
The push for a new ATH will also take quite a bit of time as it would be very different from a correction that could occur in just a matter of days as everyone has seen in the past few days, so this is actually quite normal because it can provide an opportunity for those who haven't bought on the previous correction even though it's a harsh reality for the coin holders in the long term and haven't sold it till now.