Free Float¶
Free float is the number of a company's shares genuinely available for public trading on the open market. It is calculated by subtracting restricted shares and closely held shares — held by insiders, founders, executives, strategic corporate holders, and governments — from total shares outstanding. Free float is the primary measure of a stock's tradable supply and directly governs its liquidity, volatility profile, and index weighting.
HOW IT WORKS¶
Free float is calculated as:
Free Float = Shares Outstanding − Restricted Shares − Closely Held Shares
The resulting float percentage is Free Float divided by Shares Outstanding. Most large caps sit between 70% and 100%; recent IPOs and small caps frequently fall below 20%. Index providers such as S&P Dow Jones and MSCI apply an Investable Weight Factor (IWF) that excludes any strategic holder above roughly 5% of shares outstanding. Free float is not static — it shifts with insider sales, secondary offerings, buybacks, lock-up expirations, and vesting schedules, and data vendors update it on different cadences.
Low-float stocks — typically under 20 million shares — can move violently on modest volume because a small number of shares changing hands represents a large percentage of total tradable supply. Short-squeeze risk is measured as short interest divided by float (float short %), not by shares outstanding; a high float-short reading on a small float is a significant risk factor.
IN TAPEBOARD¶
Tapeboard surfaces free float in the stock detail panel alongside shares outstanding and float short percentage. Use the screener to filter by float tier — under 5M, 5M–20M, 20M–100M, and 100M+ — to isolate names matching your volatility or liquidity requirements. Float short % is displayed next to short interest so squeeze risk is visible in a single view without manual calculation. When a lock-up expiration is on the calendar, Tapeboard flags the event on the chart timeline, since expiring lock-ups expand effective float and can trigger predictable index-fund rebalancing flows.