Stratum for PPC was released 2 days ago.

Running pool is hard work: DDOS attacks, load balancing, miner efficiency problems etc.
Coinotron worked fine till 1000s joined in few days.

Price jumps have nothing to do with buying/selling.
They originate from mainstream press coverage and speculation.

Biggest marketplace Silk Road monthly volume is few millions.

suprnova.cc hash rate have dropped due to server problems.

Pool luck graphs shows bad luck now, 1 block found per day for last 2 days.

I have been using Coinotron for long time but now server seems overloaded.

give-me-lt us using PPLNS so it would take many rounds to get real maximum payout.

Litecoin is currently quite popular so many pools are overloaded or under DDoS.

More options:
https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/wiki/Comparison-of-mining-pools

It can support up to 6 gfx's but only with PCI Express risers.