I have been a shareholder in ARU on and off since 2017. I first...

I have been a shareholder in ARU on and off since 2017. I first bought in because I wanted exposure to the Australian rare earths field and thought that the management of ARU was trustworthy, if a bit too cautious (and GL was no Shakespearian orator!). I sold out completely twice, frustrated by the glacial rate of progress, but bought back in after the successful results from the one-tenth-scale model of the processing plant (complete with unique processing technique) came in. A year ago I was very optimistic that I would actually enter green territory, but in February this year I was startled by the appearance of Hancock Prospecting. I posted then that I thought it very likely that Gina would gut the SP and take ARU private (see #65999019), but held on to my position because the train seemed to be leaving the station at last, even with Gina on board.
Other posters on the ARU forum have referred to Hancock's involvement in LionTown Resources and Atlas Iron and when I researched these I became even more convinced that ARU would suffer the same fate. Naively, I continued to hold because the essentials (resource, process, market) were so strong. I think I even convinced myself that Gina would be satisfied with a flourishing 10% stake. The announcements of the Hyundai/Kia and GE offtake agreements kept me confident. Then the shorting began with a vengeance. While the fall in NdPr prices could be blamed, the pressure was so relentless that it was clearly orchestrated. It now seems certain that my February fears were justified: that the shorting was a device to move ARU into the very centre of the takeover target board.
This week's CR has been the acid icing on an already poisonous cake. I doubt that the company even had a genuine need of the cash: the CR was simply a technique to slash a further 20% from the already depressed SP. We retail suckers will probably never find out who the instos and sophs who benefited were - but it would be a tasty bit of scandal if we ever did.
We can't blame Gina for being a ruthless, mercenary capitalist (AFR Businesswoman of the Year, remember) who doesn't give a rat's about retail shareholders. She and her squadron of lawyers would no doubt yell that Hancock had complied with the law and they would probably be proven right. But she didn't have the power to launch the latest CR (which has probably cost me $100k at least): we can blame GL and his BOD. And we can point the finger at ASIC for being completely supine in this and many other cases of SP manipulation.
I'm sorry to say it and disappoint chokdee particularly, but the SP will never go north again. A few recipients of 16 cent shares will want to sell some for a penny's worth of profit, but I doubt that it will ever go above 20c. Once Gina had taken a 10% bite, the fruit was rotten for all retail holders. I've moved my sentiment to Sell and as good as my word I dumped a lot of my holding today at probably the absolute bottom of the SP.
Birchcorp, if you read this wine-soaked monologue, I'm ready to join your protest march against manipulative short selling..