That's something different. There's two effects going on: 1) Each 'slice' of the slinky, whether near the bottom, middle, or top, wants to fall down under the

That's something different. There's two effects going on: 1) Each 'slice' of the slinky, whether near the bottom, middle, or top, wants to fall down under the influence of gravity. 2) Once the top is released, spring forces in the slinky want to compress it so that the top and bottom both move towards the middle. Therefore you'll briefly have one part somewhere in the bottom half (not necessarily the "bottom"--it depends on how strong the spring is), that's being pulled up at 9.8m/s^2, which ends up matching the speed that the slinky center of mass is falling down, thereby making it appearing to hover in place for a moment.