I think it's getting very very difficult to buy strong domains, especially at 'domainer' prices, hence the apparent slowdown. In terms of demand, the market is stronger than ever. I know of a few nice sales this week, but not sure if they'll be published. One was a strong mid six figure sale of a worthy .com. I'm buying a generic .com for mid five figures - it's in escrow, but not completed yet.
It's interesting that DNJournal's top sales in the last couple of weeks have been .EU and .ORG domains - I think this is because competition in the .COM market is so strong that even the big players are being forced to look at alternative extensions. Bear in mind that while Ron does a fantastic job with DNJournal, his sales report is just the tip of the iceberg of the deals that go down - I've seen at least ten six-figure sales slip under the radar in the last year.