No you're not alone.  I bought at $7.73, $8.60 and $9.75 (and not in that order) as the price retracted and I expected it to bounce back and take off.   Easy to see how someone could have been buying all the way up and get squeezed hard if they were margined as the price has peeled back on a lot of stocks this past two weeks (not just resources or ARU).
With the market so jittery, gold prices taking a hit, and lots of bad news out there with regard to some big projects being side lined its easy to see how a few opportunistic traders can drive the price down and squeeze quite a few shares into the market. 
 
I'm pretty secure in my stock position and have enough knowledge to know that in the long run I'm going to make money.  HOWEVER, when I thought about buying today around $7.45 I chickened out and sat on the sidelines (a first for me) to see what was going to happen.   There are not too many retail investors that will buy a stock today expecting it to go down over the next month just to get into a position in a company.  Majors will do that but not Joe Average.  With no news expected until after Christmas (assuming 6 weeks between releases) I'm guessing we are going to get pounded at every opportunity that the speculators can find. So while I'm holding tight to what I have (it would be hard to rebuild my position after I give the government their share) I'm not in the buying mode.

If it was the intent of all those cross trades to drive down investor confidence in ARU holders I think they have been pretty successful.  For Christmas I'm hoping for an unexpected major new release that drives the stock up and sc _ _ _  all those that are shorting the stock either directly or through options.  In the meantime I'll hold and wait for ARU to do something to support its retail share base.