Float
The number of a company's shares that are available for public trading, excluding shares held by insiders, institutions with restricted stock, and other locked-up shares.
Explained Simply
A stock's float is the portion of its outstanding shares that can actually be bought and sold on the open market. Low-float stocks (under 10-20 million shares) tend to be more volatile because there are fewer shares available to trade — any surge in demand can cause dramatic price spikes. High-float stocks (hundreds of millions or billions of shares) like Apple or Microsoft tend to move more gradually. Day traders specifically seek out low-float stocks because they offer larger percentage moves. Float also matters for short squeezes — when a large percentage of a low-float stock is sold short, a buying surge can force short sellers to cover, creating a violent upward spiral.
How Tradewink Uses Float
Tradewink's DayTradeScreener factors float into its candidate scoring. Low-float stocks with high relative volume receive a scoring boost because they offer greater intraday movement potential. The system also cross-references float with short interest data to identify potential short squeeze setups, and the PositionSizer reduces position sizes on extremely low-float names to account for wider spreads and higher slippage risk.
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See Float in action
Tradewink uses float as part of its AI trading signal pipeline. Start getting signals that use this concept to find real opportunities.