You are not out to lunch. There is also a lot of poker in very short-term moves when there isn't a lot of volume. At record prices (for example in August when crude was approaching $78, or now), longs are always jumpy, and there is always some analyst providing a headline for them to get even jumpier about. When there isn't much volume, it doesn't take much buying or selling to move the price a couple of bucks. You sell enough to trigger selling, and you buy back cheap Wednesday morning for the inventory report. Or vice versa, depending on conditions.

But this kind of stuff doesn't really matter for very long. The longer a price is manipulated or based on bad information, the bigger the breakout once fundamentals are in charge again.