MEDS, September 16: the $5 wall, two halts, and $12.31

What happened

Draft for review. Not published.

The day before

On September 15, MEDS ran from $0.89 to $3.85 by 1:32 p.m. It gave most of it back and closed at $1.62.

The news came after the close. At 4:05 p.m. the company announced it was buying a cancer-diagnostics lab and a cancer-research business. So the run came first, and the reason came after the bell. After hours it was already back up to $1.91. By the next morning it was one of the biggest gappers of the day.

Pre-market: the float traded before 4:30 a.m.

The first trades on the 16th were around $1.71, already above the $1.62 close. By 4:11 a.m. it traded 20% higher. By 4:22 a.m., more shares had traded than exist in the whole float (2.38 million). By 8:35 a.m. that was ten times the float.

The pre-market high was $4.80 at 6:51 a.m. 30.3 million shares traded before the bell.

The wall at $5.00

This is the part a chart doesn't show you.

From 7 a.m. on, someone was offering a lot of stock at exactly $5.00. About 20,000 shares sat there all pre-market. After the open it grew. By 9:40 there were over 85,000 shares for sale at $5.00, across all exchanges. It sat above the first rows of a Level 2 screen, so you had to scroll up to see it. That's a lot of stock for a 2.4-million-share float.

The open was $4.03. The stock worked up toward the wall for 18 minutes.

Here's what happened. At 9:48:51 the first trade printed at $5.00. In about six seconds, 83,223 shares traded at exactly $5.00 and the wall was gone. It wasn't pulled. Buyers ate it. One second later the best ask was $5.15.

$6, then the flush

It tagged $6.00 at 9:59. Then it fell hard. The 10:05 candle dropped to $4.72, and at 10:06 it hit $4.62, giving back most of the move from the wall.

For the next 35 minutes it chopped between $4.62 and $6.00. At 10:26 a news story went out asking why the stock was up.

Two halts and the top

At 10:42 it started moving again, from $5.54. By the end of the 10:43 minute it was at $6.67, and at 10:43:33 it was halted (a volatility pause).

It reopened at 10:48 around $6.10 and climbed through $7 and $8 to $8.76. At 10:52:27 it was halted again. It reopened at 10:57:27 at $9.14.

The first minute after the reopen went to $9.90. The next minute it hit $12.31, the high of the day, at 10:58. Within a minute it was back at $9.22.

The rest of the day

It came back once more. At 11:18 it pushed to $11.33, a lower high under the $12.31 top, and that was the last real try. From there it faded all afternoon: $7.62 by 12:22, $5.72 at 1:43, and $6.06 at the close.

After hours it bounced to $6.89 by 4:30 p.m. Then at 5:11 p.m. the company filed an 8-K, and within a minute the stock dropped to $5.22.

By the close, 70 million shares had traded: the float changed hands about 29 times, at about 51 times its normal volume.

What to take from it: A big ask wall at a round number is a level, not a ceiling. When buyers eat it fast, the price above can be thin and the move can be quick. Chasing right after a wall breaks or a halt reopens costs more than the screen says. The book is thinnest in those seconds. Day two of a news runner can be bigger than day one. Here, day one ended at $1.62. Day two reached $12.31.