Define "Natural market behaviour". Do you think that if the market was being manipulated it would be made obvious? There are many philanthropists in this forum who freely tell us what the market is going to do next but manipulators aren't nearly as generous.
There's a few ways to look at this.
If there's stops above, from people that shorted, then these stops are buy orders.
So, if the price is 102.44 and there are buy stops at 102.60, the buy stops are actually buyers willing to buy 102.60.
If you were a seller and you figured that there were a lot of buyers willing to buy at that high price, how motivated would you be to sell at 102.44? Why not wait and get the additional 16c.
Given this, it is natural for the market to seek out that high priced liquidity. The fact that it can de-motivate sellers is enough to see prices rise.
In terms of short term manipulation, it does occur but it does not occur predictably. If people always manipulated the market in the same way, they'd end up being taken advantage of themselves.
You can of course fade a stop run (which might actually be a lack of motivated sellers due to liquidity above) which is effectively taking advantage of manipulation after it occurs but you never know if that short term manipulation will gather steam and become the start of a longer term move.
At best, you can spot manipulation on a DOM in the very short term but it's a tough job and there is lower hanging fruit to pick IMO.
