KITT on September 25, 2026: why it ran

The day, step by step

• Small cap
• Momentum
• News before the open
• Halted overnight, reopened 9:00
• Float traded by 9:04
• Round trip
• Faded all the way

The night before the open

KITT closed on September 24 at $2.95. It was a quiet stock. The whole prior day traded 38,261 shares.

At 3:04 a.m. on the 25th it was halted. At 3:55 a.m. PRNewsWire ran this headline: “Nauticus Robotics, Inc. Signs Non-Binding Letter of Intent for Strategic Investment of Up to $50 Million”. At 8:41 a.m. the company filed an 8-K (a current report). The stock had not traded since the halt.

The float is small: 989,853 shares. The halt was set to end at 9:00 a.m.

9:00 to 9:09: the spike and the drop

Here's what happened. The first trades after the halt were at $3.61, already above the $2.95 close. The first minute ran to $5.83 and closed at $4.98 on 47,760 shares.

The next minute, 9:01, went from $5.13 to $8.39, the high so far, on 350,994 shares. In the 9:02 minute it traded as low as $5.64.

By the end of the 9:04 minute, more shares had traded than exist in the whole float (989,853). Volume was heavy for seven minutes straight, with every minute from 9:01 through 9:07 above 200,000 shares.

The fall and one lower high

Then it fell. At 9:07 it hit $3.45, down 59% from $8.39. At 9:08:17 one sell order of 12,857 shares went through seven price levels, from $3.83 to $3.77, in a blink.

It came back once more. At 9:09 it pushed to $4.20, a lower high under the $8.39 top. By 9:17 it was down to $2.89, under the previous close. 3.46 million shares traded before the bell.

The open

The 9:30 open was $3.22, up 9% from the previous close. It did not hold. At 9:31 a sell order of 11,230 shares swept from $2.84 to $2.81 across four levels, and the minute low was $2.53. At 9:34 it touched $2.30.

After that the stock went quiet. By 9:47 it was near $2.40, and many later minutes traded fewer than 1,000 shares. It was a different stock from the one at 9:01.

The wall at $2.72

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

From 11:26 a.m. on, a large offer sat at exactly $2.72, well above the $2.40 price. It peaked at 40,873 shares at 11:31, about 4% of the float.

Here's what happened. At 11:37:36 the wall was pulled. The size left the book without trading there. The stock did not go to $2.72. It stayed around $2.40 for the rest of the hour.

A bid wall showed up too. At 11:48 about 30,000 shares appeared on the bid at $2.34, and it was pulled at 11:50. The price barely moved.

The rest of the day

It drifted lower, to $2.19 at 12:44 p.m., the low of the day. At 2:01 p.m. volume picked up and it bounced to $2.61 by 2:10, then settled back near $2.40.

Bid walls of about 35,000 shares came and went around $2.27 and $2.33 between 3:22 and 3:55. At 3:59 the stock dipped to $2.32 on 11,598 shares, and it closed at $2.32, 72% below the $8.39 high.

The regular session itself traded 1,418,888 shares. Counting the 3.46 million premarket shares, 4.88 million shares had traded by the close: the float changed hands about 5 times, and relative volume for the day was 45.

After hours

After hours it ran again, from $2.42 at 4:35 p.m. to $2.86 at 4:43 p.m., on heavy volume. No news is in the data for that move. It gave it back by 4:50 and slid to $2.19 at 7:59 p.m., the same as the day's low. 813,530 shares traded after hours.

What to take from it

• After the top, the next push stopped lower. $8.39 at 9:01, then $4.20 at 9:09.
• Reopens and spikes are the thinnest moments. At 9:00:01 the screen showed 583 shares, and a 5,000-share order averaged $21,418 over the screen.
• A big wall can be pulled instead of traded. The 40,873-share ask at $2.72 was pulled at 11:37:36 without the price ever reaching it while it was posted.

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