Recaps · September 17, 2026

LSTA, September 17: a halt from 7:55 to 9:55, a $2.67 spike, and a fade to $1.74

• Small cap
• Momentum
• Gap and fade
• Catalyst: acquisition
• Halted once
• Reopen spike

Float

7.92 million shares

Volume

1.25 million shares

Previous close

$1.47

Open

$2.50 (up 70.1%)

High

$2.67 at 9:55 a.m.

Halts

1 (7:55 a.m.)

Close

$1.75

Before the open

LSTA closed the day before, September 16, at $1.47. It was a quiet stock: that day it traded 31,688 shares between $1.46 and $1.57.

At 7:55 a.m. it was halted (news pending). No shares traded pre-market. The halt lasted two hours.

At 9:26 a.m. GlobeNewsWire ran: “Lisata Therapeutics Announces Acquisition of Marea Therapeutics and $225 Million Concurrent Private Placement”. At 9:27 a.m. the company filed an 8-K (a current report). The stock was still halted when both came out.

The reopen at 9:55

Trading resumed at 9:55 a.m. The first trade was a big print of 21,367 shares at $2.50. That is 70% above the $1.47 previous close, and it is the open price too.

Here's what happened. The 9:55 candle ran to $2.67, the high of the day, up 82% from the previous close. It also dropped to $1.74 in the same minute and closed at $1.87. Over 101,000 shares traded in that one minute.

The fade

The next minute, 9:56, it traded as low as $1.61 and closed at $1.71. At 9:59 it hit $1.50, the low of the day. That is $1.17 under the top, four minutes after the reopen.

After that it settled into a tight range. From 10:00 to 11:29 it stayed between $1.55 and $1.80. Volume dried up. Many minutes traded only a few hundred shares.

The second try

At 11:30 it pushed up out of that range, from $1.79 to $1.94. At 11:32 it reached $1.95, a lower high under the $2.67 top. At 11:34 a sell order of 10,264 shares swept through nine price levels, from $1.90 to $1.80, in a fraction of a second. By 11:38 it was at $1.76.

At 12:25 p.m. Proactive Investors ran: “Lisata Therapeutics acquires Marea Therapeutics, secures $225 million private placement”.

At 1:05 p.m. another sweep sold 10,376 shares from $1.80 to $1.76. At 1:10 p.m. it dipped to $1.63 on heavy volume, then recovered to $1.80 by 1:13.

The close

From 1 p.m. on, the stock stayed between $1.63 and $1.85. At 2:09 p.m. Benzinga ran: “Nano Cap Lisata Therapeutics Bolsters Cardioendocrine Pipeline Strategy”. In the last two minutes, volume picked up: 15,683 shares at 3:58 and 49,317 at 3:59, which touched $1.79. It closed at $1.74 in the 4:00 minute.

Regular session volume was 1.23 million shares, about 6 times normal volume. The float is 7.92 million shares, so about 16% of it traded. Another 15,419 shares traded after hours.

What to take from it

• A reopen from a long news halt can print the high of the day in the first minute. Here the top was $2.67 at 9:55, and the stock was at $1.50 four minutes later.
• Here, the first buyers after the reopen paid well over the screen price. The book was thin: at 9:55:01 a 5,000-share buy averaged $2.66 against $2.48 on screen.
• After the spike, the next push stopped lower. $1.95 at 11:32 sat well under $2.67.