Recaps · September 24, 2026

VBIO, September 24: $4.86 at 8:14 a.m., $3.46 at the close

• Small cap
• Momentum
• Main move: pre-market
• Float traded about 6x
• Bid walls
• Lower high
• No halts

Float

763,037 shares

Volume

4.47 million shares

Previous close

$2.73

Open

$2.60 (up 4.8%)

High

$4.86 at 8:14 a.m.

Close

$3.46

The day before

On September 23, VBIO traded between $2.28 and $3.29 and ended with an official close of $2.73.

The one headline in the data came out that morning. At 8:00 a.m. on the 23rd, Accesswire ran: Valion Appoints Life Sciences Veteran Dean Zikria as Interim CEO and Announces Board Leadership Transitions. There were no headlines on the 24th itself.

Pre-market

From the first trade at 4:07 a.m. the stock sat in a narrow range, $2.70 to $2.93 until 8:11. Until 8:08, no minute traded more than 1,000 shares. Many minutes had no trades at all. The float is 763,037 shares, and the stock had barely used it.

At 8:11 it was $2.89. At 8:12 it traded as high as $3.10 on 3,304 shares.

Here's what happened. The 8:13 minute went from $3.10 to $4.13 on 145,372 shares. The next minute was the biggest of the day. At 8:14 a.m. it hit $4.86, the high so far, up 78% from the previous close, on 519,988 shares. It closed that minute at $4.20.

It came down almost as fast. At 8:15:06 a single sell order of 11,081 shares went through 18 price levels, from $4.22 to $4.04. At 8:17:55 another sell, 15,142 shares, went from $3.44 to $3.30 across 15 levels. The 8:17 minute hit $3.21. A third, 10,805 shares at 8:20:54, moved from $3.20 to $3.18 across 3 levels. By 8:26 it had traded as low as $2.60, below the previous close.

By the end of the 8:15 minute, more shares had traded that morning than exist in the whole float. By 8:30 the price was back at $2.68. 2.75 million shares traded before the bell.

Two bid walls before the open

The stock drifted down through the 8:30s and 9:00s, to a pre-market low of $2.45 at 8:36. Then buyers showed up on the book.

At 9:13:55 a bid wall appeared at $2.52. It peaked at 39,014 shares at 9:16:59, 5.1% of the float, and was pulled at 9:18:01.

A second wall appeared at $2.59 at 9:24:52. It peaked at 36,153 shares at 9:25:49 (4.7% of the float) and was pulled at 9:30:20, twenty seconds after the open.

The open and the low

It opened at $2.60, 5% below the $2.73 previous close. The 9:30 minute traded 13,526 shares.

At 9:43 it dropped to $2.32, the low so far. The minute traded 28,409 shares, the most of any regular-session minute up to that point.

It recovered slowly. At 10:01:05 a buy order of 10,439 shares took the price from $2.68 to $2.71 across 4 levels. At 10:03:19 another buy of 15,622 shares went from $2.80 to $2.91 across 12 levels. The 10:03 minute traded 44,963 shares and reached $2.91.

Midday

Through the late morning it chopped between about $2.72 and $3.20, with the $3.20 coming at 11:36. At 12:50 it was at $2.96. Volume was thin for long stretches.

At 1:00 p.m. it started to climb, $3.07 and then $3.18 by 1:03. The 1:06 minute opened at $3.21 and closed at $3.38 on 30,991 shares.

Here's what happened. At 1:07 p.m. it pushed to $3.78, on 85,414 shares. That was the best price since the morning spike, and it stayed below the $4.86 high. It was $3.32 by the end of the next minute and $3.14 at 1:09 p.m. After a bounce to $3.50 at 1:11, it fell to $2.87 at 1:17 and $2.84 at 1:25 p.m.

The afternoon and after hours

The last two hours went the other way, a slow climb. It reached $3.50 at 3:06 p.m. and a late-session high of $3.65 at 3:53, still under the $3.78 from 1:07. It closed at $3.46, up 27% on the previous close and 29% below the $4.86 high.

After hours, the stock got to $3.79 at 4:28 p.m. Two Form 4 filings (insider transactions) came in at 4:45 and 4:46 p.m. After hours volume was 172,268 shares.

Across the whole day, 4.47 million shares traded: the float changed hands about 6 times, at about 35 times its normal volume. 2.75 million of that was pre-market, 1.55 million was the regular session, and the rest was after hours. There were no halts.

What to take from it

• The biggest move came pre-market. The 8:13 and 8:14 minutes did the spike, and the stock was back below the $2.73 previous close by 8:26.
• After the top, the next push stopped lower. $4.86 at 8:14 a.m., then $3.78 at 1:07 p.m.
• Volume came all at once. Until 8:08 no minute traded more than 1,000 shares; by the end of the 8:15 minute more than the 763,037-share float had traded.