SCYX on September 28, 2026: why it ran

The day, step by step

• Small cap
• Momentum
• Main move: pre-market
• Catalyst: news (BARDA contract)
• Spike and fade
• No halts

Before the headline

SCYX closed on September 25 at $4.39. It was a quiet stock that day: 16,502 shares traded, in a range of $4.36 to $4.56.

The 28th started the same way. The first trade was at 4:01 a.m., 20 shares at $4.58. Then nothing printed for three and a half hours.

7:30: the headline and the spike

At 7:30 a.m. GlobeNewsWire ran: “SCYNEXIS Awarded BARDA Contract Providing Up to $214 Million in Non-Dilutive Funding for the Development of SCY-247”.

The 7:30 minute opened at $4.98, ran as high as $6.48 and closed at $6.47. The float is 9.8 million shares, and 93,989 traded in that one minute.

Here's what happened. The high so far, $6.77, printed in the 7:31 minute. That is 54% above the previous close. In the same minute it traded as low as $5.52 and closed at $5.62. 260,388 shares changed hands, the busiest minute of the day.

The 7:32 minute was nearly as wild. At 7:32:16 one sell order swept 11,055 shares from $5.99 down to $5.73, across 24 price levels. Twenty seconds later, at 7:32:36, a buy order swept 11,120 shares from $5.93 up to $6.09. The bar went to $6.35 and closed at $5.95.

After the high

From there it came down fast. The 7:33 minute fell to $5.04 and the 7:34 minute to $4.80. Close to a million shares (980,296) had traded in the first five minutes, from 7:30 through 7:34.

It pushed up to $5.51 in the 7:36 minute, well under the $6.77 high. Then sellers hit it. At 7:36:59 one sell order swept 16,270 shares from $5.07 to $4.98, across 9 levels. The 7:40 minute dropped to $4.31, with another sweep at 7:40:56: 13,397 shares from $4.50 to $4.35, across 11 levels.

At 7:42 it hit $4.22, the low of the day, below the $4.39 previous close. The whole spike, and then some, was gone in about 11 minutes. Another sell sweep at 7:45:43 took 12,029 shares from $4.66 to $4.47 as it bounced.

A quiet pre-market, then the open

After 7:45 the volume dried up. It drifted between about $4.40 and $4.70 until 7:57, then pushed to $5.11 at 8:00, still below the $5.51 high of the 7:36 minute. By 8:15 it was back near $4.54 and ranged between about $4.45 and $4.95 until the open.

In total, 2.69 million shares traded before the bell, more than a quarter of the float, and most of it in the first 15 minutes after the headline.

It opened at $4.62, up 5% from the previous close and 32% under the pre-market high. The regular session was calm by comparison: 1,022,470 shares in all.

The regular session

Until 10:20 it ranged between about $4.53 and $4.98. At 10:20 it pushed up. At 10:20:40 a buy order swept 11,817 shares from $5.00 to $5.05, across 5 levels. The regular-session high was $5.14 at 10:21, well below the pre-market spike.

Then it faded. The low after the open was $4.45 at 10:55. From noon on, it moved in a narrow band around $4.45 to $4.70, with many minutes where little or nothing traded. The 4:00 p.m. bar closed at $4.62, 32% below the high of the day.

For the whole day, 3.76 million shares traded, about 38% of the float. That was about 113 times its normal volume.

After hours

At 4:01 p.m., just after the close, the company filed an 8-K. After hours the stock traded between $4.46 and $4.71, on 44,744 shares.

What to take from it

• The spike and the headline arrived together, and the high lasted one minute. $6.77 printed at 7:31 a.m. and the 7:34 minute closed at $5.20.
• The 7:36 bounce did not hold. The $5.51 push at 7:36 ended in a sweep of sellers, and by 7:42 the stock was under its previous close.
• Most of the pre-market volume came in the first 15 minutes. About 1.70 million of the 2.69 million pre-market shares traded from 7:30 to 7:44. The regular session was 1.02 million shares for six and a half hours.

Open this recap on its own page