Hindsight Markets Recaps Small-cap stocks on August 20, 2026
PCLA, August 20: six halts, a $6.60 bid, and $12.87
PCLA opened near its previous close, then ran to $12.87 through six halts during the session.
What happened
Draft for review. Not published.
A quiet start
No headline is in our data. It opened at $6.35 and stayed under $6.49 for over half an hour.
Stop It's 10:10. PCLA is at $6.80, above the $6.70 pre-market high. From the 9:30 open until 10:06 it stayed between $6.34 and $6.49. Would you buy here?
Press play: the real Level 2, tape and chart run from 10:07 a.m. and stop at 10:10 a.m. ET for your call.
Four halts, one bid
That was the start of a run with four halts by 10:46. The second reopened higher at 10:27:34 and hit $11.33. By 10:46 it had fallen to $6.55. At 10:49:28 a 33K-share bid appeared at $6.60.
Stop It's 10:50. PCLA is at $7.23, up from the $6.55 low four minutes ago. A bid for as many as 32,983 shares sits at $6.60, below the market. Would you buy here?
Press play: the real Level 2, tape and chart run from 10:47 a.m. and stop at 10:50 a.m. ET for your call.
It climbed to $8.54. At 10:59:35 the bid was pulled without trading.
The afternoon push
Stop It's 2:17. PCLA is at $11.23, under the $11.72 high from 2:14. More than 1.05 million shares, the whole float, have already traded. Would you buy here?
Press play: the real Level 2, tape and chart run from 2:14 p.m. and stop at 2:17 p.m. ET for your call.
At 2:19 it hit $12.87, the high. Two more halts followed.
It closed at $8.43.
What to take from it: On this day the screen price at a halt reopen was not the fill, and a big bid left without trading.
Replay PCLA's day
It starts at 10:00 a.m. ET with the real Level 2, time and sales and chart, from the same feed the replay plays, stops at 10:03 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
Intraday run. It opened down 0.8% at $6.35, then ran from the open to the high of $12.87 in 289 minutes through 4 halts.
| Time (ET) | What happened | Watch it |
|---|---|---|
| 4:20 a.m. | Pre-market high, $6.70 | |
| 9:30 a.m. | The open: $6.35, down 0.8% from the previous close | |
| 10:11 a.m. | First trade 20% above the previous close of $6.40 | |
| 2:07 p.m. | Volume since 4:00 a.m. passes the whole float, 1.05 million shares | |
| 2:19 p.m. | High of the day to the close, $12.87 | |
| 3:59 p.m. | Last trade before the 4:00 p.m. close, $8.43, 34.5% 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
- $6.40
- Open, 9:30 a.m.
- $6.35
- Gap at the open
- −0.8%
- Pre-market high
- $6.70 at 4:20 a.m.
- High, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- $12.87 at 2:19 p.m.
- Low, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- $6.21
- Close, 4 p.m.
- $8.43
- Change at 4 p.m.
- +31.7%
- After-hours high, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- $8.49 at 4:00 p.m.
- Volume, 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- 2.56 million
- Volume after hours, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- 78,830
- Relative volume by 8 p.m.
- 14.1×
- Float
- 1.05 million shares, from filings as of August 20, 2026
- Shares outstanding
- 4.15 million
- Volume, from the one-minute bars: 2,057 shares before the 9:30 a.m. open (0%), 1,744 in the first 30 minutes (0%), and 2.63 million in the rest of the day to 8 p.m. (100%).
- Float rotation, the volume since 4 a.m. against the float of 1.05 million shares: past it once at 2:07 p.m., twice at 2:38 p.m.
- Other days PCLA met the small-cap rule in our recaps: 4, the latest on October 29, 2026.
On the day's lists: the gainers, intraday runners. It is here because it met the small-cap rule on the gainers: price $2 to $20, up 10% or more, relative volume 5× or more, float under 20 million shares, its high reached $1 or more and it started the day at $20 or under (the rule every page uses).
Halts (6)
| Halted | Resumed | Length | The 5 minutes into it | Reopened at, against the last trade | The 5 minutes after | Reason in the feed | Watch it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10:12 a.m. | 10:17 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 21.1% | $8.30, up 4.7% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | ||
| 10:17 a.m. | 10:27 a.m. | 10 min 0 s | up 15.1% | $10.30, up 12.8% | down 10.9% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:30 a.m. | 10:35 a.m. | 5 min 0 s | up 0.5% | $8.88, down 3.3% | down 10.0% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 10:36 a.m. | 10:46 a.m. | 10 min 0 s | down 13.0% | $7.23, down 9.5% | unchanged | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 2:22 p.m. | 2:27 p.m. | 5 min 0 s | down 10.4% | $10.82, unchanged | down 10.0% | LULD pause (limit up-limit down) | |
| 2:28 p.m. | 2:38 p.m. | 10 min 0 s | down 10.0% | $8.86, down 9.0% | up 0.5% | 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 PCLA on August 20, 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.