The market is moving incredibly normal and nothing out of the ordinary as far as a price action and TA is concerned. If it's being manipulated or not, it's irrelevant to traders. If it's being manipulated now, then it likely has been forever now anyways, so don't necessarily understand that point.
Anyways it's not exceedingly difficult. Maybe to trade it, keep discipline and find an edge. OK, yes that can be very difficult. But if you pull up a smaller chart and look at what happens when the chart breaks down, you'll see very similar patterns playing out now on the Daily chart. It's just most of the time markets are bullish, so when Daily chart actually goes into a legit sell people come up with all kinds of theories, news, excuses and etc.