Recaps · August 27, 2026

CELU, August 27: a 9:00 headline, the $2.20 wall, and $2.55

• Small cap
• Momentum
• Main move: late morning
• Catalyst: news
• Round-number break
• Pre-market spike and fade
• Lower high
• Float traded 4x

Float

17.55 million shares

Volume

78.14 million shares

Previous close

$0.8804

Open

$1.11 (up 26.1%)

High

$2.55 at 11:04 a.m.

Close

$2.08

Pre-market: the headline and a spike to $1.40

The previous close was $0.88. Before 9:00 a.m., 451 shares traded.

At 9:00 a.m. Business Wire ran: “Celularity and MuseCell Innovations® Announce U.S. Manufacturing Collaboration for the Dezawa MuseCell® Platform.”

The stock barely moved at first: 9:00 a.m. traded at $0.92 on 122 shares, and at 9:04 a.m. it traded at $0.90. It crossed $1.00 at 9:11 a.m. The big volume came at 9:12 a.m., when it hit $1.26. At 9:14 a.m. it reached the pre-market high of $1.40.

Then it fell back. At 9:16 a.m. it was $0.95, down 32% from the high, about two minutes later. 3.84 million shares traded before the bell. The float is 17.55 million.

The open and a slow grind

It opened at $1.11, up 26% from the previous close. It sank to $0.93 at 9:31 a.m.

From $1.04 at 9:50 a.m. it pushed to $1.28 at 9:55 a.m., then fell to $0.98 at 9:57 a.m. After that it spent a long stretch between about $1.03 and $1.21. Volume was small compared with the pre-market burst.

At 10:27 a.m. it cleared the pre-market high of $1.40. By 10:36 a.m. it was at $1.85. By 10:43 a.m., counting pre-market, more shares had traded than exist in the whole float (17.55 million).

The wall at $2.20

At 10:51 a.m. it traded through $2.00 for the first time. At 10:53 a.m. it reached $2.18.

Just above, stock was being offered at exactly $2.20. The wall was first seen at 10:58:14. It peaked at 104,668 shares at 10:58:37, across all exchanges. That is about 0.6% of the float.

Here's what happened. At 11:00:46 the first trade printed at $2.20. In 9 seconds, 63,489 shares traded at exactly $2.20 and the wall was gone. It wasn't pulled. Buyers ate it. At 11:00:55 one buy order of 94,241 shares swept from $2.20 to $2.25 across 6 price levels.

The 11:00 minute closed at $2.29. At 11:04 a.m. it hit $2.55, the high of the day. By 11:09 a.m. it was back at $2.17 on the low of the minute.

A lower high and the fade

It came back once more. At 11:39 a.m. it pushed to $2.45, a lower high under the $2.55 top.

At 11:45 a.m. a sell order of 130,060 shares swept from $2.19 to $2.10 across 10 price levels, and the minute low was $1.94. From there it faded to $1.78 at 12:13 p.m. From 1:00 p.m. it mostly held between $1.93 and $2.31, and the last regular-session minute (3:59) closed at $2.09.

By the close, 67.87 million shares had traded: the float changed hands about 4 times, at about 1,900 times its normal volume.

After hours

At 4:01 p.m. it spiked to $2.35, then dropped to $1.98 the next minute. After that it bounced as high as $2.29 at 4:13 p.m., then drifted lower into the evening, trading between $1.81 and $2.35 after hours. 6.42 million shares traded after hours.

What to take from it

• Here a big ask wall at a round number was a level, not a ceiling. Here 63,489 shares traded at $2.20 in 9 seconds and the stock kept going to $2.55.
• The headline came at 9:00 a.m. but the biggest move came later in the morning. The pre-market spike faded to $0.95 before the run began.
• After the top, the next push stopped lower. $2.55 at 11:04 a.m., then $2.45 at 11:39 a.m.