Hindsight Markets Recaps Small-cap stocks on August 3, 2026
HYFM, August 3: a 7:30 headline, a $2.51 wall, 25 halts, and $4.12
HYFM more than tripled at the open after news, then faded below its open by the close.
News via Stock News API
What happened
Draft for review. Not published.
A headline lit the fuse
A sale headline at 7:30 a.m. woke up a stock that closed at $0.54. By 7:58 it hit $4.12, the day's high. Pre-market traded 38M shares, far more than the 4.24M float.
The $2.51 wall
After the $3.11 open, each halt reopened lower. A 256K-share sell wall sat at $2.51 into the third halt.
Stop It's 9:46. HYFM has been halted since 9:41, after a last trade at $2.51. A wall that peaked at 256,041 shares is offered at $2.51. Each reopen so far has been lower. Would you buy the reopen?
Press play: the real Level 2, tape and chart run from 9:43 a.m. and stop at 9:46 a.m. ET for your call.
It reopened at 9:46:22 at $2.50. Buyers ate the whole wall within seconds.
Halt after halt
Six more halts came in 38 minutes. The 10:24 halt began after a $2.14 trade.
Stop It's 10:34. HYFM has been halted since 10:24, after a last trade at $2.14. Would you buy the reopen?
Press play: the real Level 2, tape and chart run from 10:31 a.m. and stop at 10:34 a.m. ET for your call.
It reopened at $1.80, 34 cents lower. It bottomed at $1.45 at 11:54 and closed at $2.12, after 25 halts.
What to take from it: On this day, halts reopened far from where they stopped, and the screen price was not what a real order paid.
Replay HYFM's day
It starts at 7:27 a.m. ET with the real Level 2, time and sales and chart, from the same feed the replay plays, stops at 7:30 a.m. and asks what you would do. Or press Play on any moment in How it traded.
The details
How it traded, step by step
Gap and fade. It gapped up 477.0% to $3.11 at the open and traded below the open by 4:00 p.m., at $2.12.
| Time (ET) | What happened | Watch it |
|---|---|---|
| 7:30 a.m. | News (GlobeNewsWire): Hydrofarm Completes Sale of Aurora Peat Products and Launches Project Agility to Scale Its Logistics Services Platform | |
| 7:30 a.m. | First trade 20% above the previous close of $0.539 | |
| 7:39 a.m. | Volume since 4:00 a.m. passes the whole float, 4.24 million shares | |
| 7:58 a.m. | Pre-market high, $4.12 | |
| 7:58 a.m. | High of the day to the close, $4.12 | |
| 9:30 a.m. | The open: $3.11, up 477.0% from the previous close | |
| 3:59 p.m. | Last trade before the 4:00 p.m. close, $2.12, 48.5% below the high |
The shape's name comes from a fixed rule, not a judgement (how shapes are named). Halts are in the halt table below.
The day in numbers
- Previous close
- $0.539
- Open, 9:30 a.m.
- $3.11
- Gap at the open
- +477.0%
- Pre-market high
- $4.12 at 7:58 a.m.
- High, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- $4.12 at 7:58 a.m.
- Low, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- $0.506
- Close, 4 p.m.
- $2.12
- Change at 4 p.m.
- +293.3%
- After-hours high, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- $2.30 at 4:34 p.m.
- Volume, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- 64.80 million
- Volume after hours, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- 3.05 million
- Relative volume by 8 p.m.
- 4818.8×
- Float
- 4.24 million shares, from filings as of August 3, 2026
- Shares outstanding
- 4.76 million
- From news to the move: the first trade 20% above the previous close came less than a minute after the latest news item before it (GlobeNewsWire, 7:30 a.m.).
- Volume, from the one-minute bars: 37.98 million shares before the 9:30 a.m. open (56%), 1.90 million in the first 30 minutes (3%), and 27.96 million in the rest of the day to 8 p.m. (41%).
- Float rotation, the volume since 4 a.m. against the float of 4.24 million shares: past it once at 7:39 a.m., twice at 7:47 a.m., three times at 7:50 a.m.
- Other days HYFM met the small-cap rule in our recaps: 1, the latest on August 5, 2026.
On the day's lists: the pre-market gappers, gainers, intraday runners. It is here because it was in play on the intraday runners: up 30% or more on $3 million or more really traded, outside the small-cap rule's price, relative volume or float, its high reached $1 or more and it started the day at $20 or under (the rule every page uses).
Halts (25)
| Halted | Resumed | Length | The 5 minutes into it | Reopened at, against the last trade | The 5 minutes after | Reason in the feed | Watch it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:30 a.m. | 9:35 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 7.2% | $2.89, down 2.4% | down 5.2% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 9:36 a.m. | 9:41 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 7.4% | $2.66, down 2.9% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 9:41 a.m. | 9:46 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 8.4% | $2.50, down 0.4% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 9:46 a.m. | 9:51 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 5.6% | $2.70, up 1.9% | down 5.6% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 9:52 a.m. | 10:02 a.m. | 10 min 0 s | down 3.8% | $2.32, down 9.0% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 10:02 a.m. | 10:07 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 3.1% | $2.47, unchanged | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 10:07 a.m. | 10:17 a.m. | 10 min 0 s | down 6.1% | $2.15, down 7.3% | up 7.0% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:18 a.m. | 10:23 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 0.9% | $2.29, down 0.4% | down 6.6% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:24 a.m. | 10:34 a.m. | 10 min 1 s | down 7.0% | $1.80, down 15.9% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 10:34 a.m. | 10:39 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 8.9% | $1.95, unchanged | up 7.7% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:41 a.m. | 10:46 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 7.7% | $2.11, up 0.5% | up 8.1% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:48 a.m. | 10:53 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 8.6% | $2.29, up 0.4% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 10:53 a.m. | 10:58 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 6.1% | $2.05, down 4.2% | up 2.9% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 11:08 a.m. | 11:13 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 6.3% | $1.91, down 1.5% | up 1.6% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 11:26 a.m. | 11:31 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 6.5% | $1.68, down 3.4% | down 7.7% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 11:33 a.m. | 11:38 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 10.9% | $1.55, unchanged | up 4.5% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 11:46 a.m. | 11:51 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 10.3% | $1.48, unchanged | up 4.7% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 12:20 p.m. | 12:25 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 12.3% | $2.17, up 3.3% | up 6.9% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 12:26 p.m. | 12:31 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 10.5% | $2.33, up 0.4% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 12:31 p.m. | 12:36 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 6.0% | $2.06, down 5.5% | down 4.4% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 12:39 p.m. | 12:44 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 9.6% | $1.98, up 0.5% | up 11.6% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 1:23 p.m. | 1:28 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 10.0% | $1.88, unchanged | up 13.3% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 1:31 p.m. | 1:36 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 13.3% | $2.14, up 0.5% | unchanged | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 3:00 p.m. | 3:05 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 15.0% | $2.37, unchanged | down 3.0% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 3:27 p.m. | 3:32 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 6.7% | $2.09, down 6.7% | up 3.6% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) |
Halt bands that day: the LULD plan's Amendment 18 rules (what that means, LULD calculator).
How we read the data, name a day's shape and pick the stocks: methodology.
Trade this day
Replay HYFM on August 3, 2026 in Hindsight Markets: the real tape, the order book and the halts, on a clock you control, and see where your orders would have filled.