As the price of BTC is increasing on an upward trend and falls only by few bucks, short-term Alternative Coin traders are crying blood. I believe it is due to the upcoming fork. How many more forks are we expecting in the future? It seems that through forks they are pumping the price of btc and once the price becomes stagnant they will start another fork.
That's actually one of the reason why forking happens. The upgrade in the bitcoin network aims to improve the bitcoin itself, including the speed of transaction fees. That's why a new coin is created during bitcoin forking (e.g. bitcoin cash and the incoming bitcoin gold).
On the other hand, it's not the forking that really makes the bitcoin price pump, but the investors and traders themselves. Due to people's expectations that bitcoin forking will result to another coin that is equivalent of the bitcoin an investor is holding, these investors and traders start to sell or trade their altcoins and invest it to bitcoin weeks before the forking. That's why bitcoin price pumps up before and during bitcoin forking and falls down weeks after the forking when they start selling their bitcoins and bitcoin-forked coins. By that time, altcoin prices will rise up as investors are expected to invest again to these altcoins.