Both do happen time to time depending on what happens. Sometimes price does soar or go down because of a very important figure, like the time China was about to ban bitcoin, that became something major, and its normal for it to became major because they are a huge nation that is very interested in crypto, but sometimes nothing happens and price still changes as well.
I would agree that time because after all 2017 was the last bull run we have, so people are somewhat very sensitive about news coming our way be positive or negative.
In many of those times of "nothing happens" that price changes, it is usually attributed to whales because in order for price to change that much out of nothing, a lot of money has to move and only whales have that kind of power and money. So, most of the time "nothing happens" rarely ever happens, there is always something going on but either we know about it or don't know about it.
Manipulators or whales are just going to play based on the news that is coming out. But the thing is that investors are getting smarter not like 2 years ago wherein a simply FUD will shake up the market price.