Ann: June 2023 Quarterly Activities and Cashflow Report, page-6

Pretty much everyone who holds this does so in expectation of the mine being built. They're just not out to trade this stock, which means until such an event is confirmed it just goes sideways. Not enough liquidity to be worth trading pretty much. Difficult to buy large positions on.

To give a fair and realistic view, it's not easy to bring this to development. Massive capex, huge technical stuff to be sorted ect...
The recent announcement of collaboration with the consortium is extremely positive because they have the ability to solve many of these issues.
My personal opinion is that these issues can be overcome, which is why I'm invested here. But I don't delude myself that it's easy to build a billion dollar mine, nor do I consider it impossible.

You are right that IF an announcement came through confirming the mine will progress, there would be serious momentum. Only if that occurs.
The spike that the SP had a while ago was IMO due to global nickel market stuff going on and quite unrelated to what ARL was doing.

DYOR, the above is just my opinion and this really is the kind of stock you should ignore everyone else on and do your own research for.