not sure if I’d call the price following TA and the China spot...

not sure if I’d call the price following TA and the China spot price isn’t “manipulation”, it’s just part of cycles, with the boom in price last few years so many mines came online quickly in Africa and China (areas that don’t have miles of red tape…), it left the rest of the world with their pants down, and any swing in supply demand will be felt now because of it. It will take some time to get onto the other side of the wave, a year or so maybe. It won’t just be car sales to watch though as more houses adopt battery energy store the demand should normalize/pick up. Re. Those small volume transactions - they are not real trades (as such) it’s the brokerage platform - the price movement will trend with the platform and/or exchange has the highest volume, any brokerage offering a product/security has to have an amount set aside it can use for these micro transactions in order to help keep traded price on that platform balanced over many different brokerage firms/platforms/exchanges (depending on the situation) so that an arbitrage does not arise between any one/more platform. Its a way of the brokerage firms “talking” to the exchange. That’s my take on what you are describing anyway, someone can correct if I’m wrong there.