Float

Float refers to the number of a company's shares that are actually available for the public to buy and sell on the open market. It is not the same as the total number of shares a company has issued. To get the float, you start with total shares outstanding and subtract shares that are locked up in ways that keep them out of everyday trading — for example, shares held by company founders and executives, large long-term institutional holders, or shares still subject to a lockup period after an IPO.

Think of it as the "free-floating" supply of a stock. A company might have 100 million shares outstanding, but if insiders and a few large funds hold 80 million of them and have no intention of selling anytime soon, the float is closer to 20 million. That smaller number is what actually changes hands day to day, and it's what determines how easily the stock can be bought or sold without moving the price.

The nuance that trips people up is that float is not fixed forever, and it's also not always precisely knowable in real time. Insiders can sell (increasing float), companies can issue new shares or do buybacks (changing the total pool), and lockup periods expire and release previously restricted shares all at once. Float estimates you see on a broker's stock screener are approximations, updated periodically, not a live count — so two different data providers can show slightly different float numbers for the same stock.

Low float and high float are relative terms, not fixed categories, and what counts as "low" varies by market and by who's talking. The general idea holds across definitions: fewer shares available to trade means each buy or sell order has a bigger relative impact on price.