Float with its age, and where a stock files from

Float, with a date

Float is how many shares are actually available to trade. On a fast small cap, it is often the number that explains why a stock moves the way it does. No market-data feed publishes it, so AutoScanTrade works it out from recent public SEC filings: shares outstanding, less the shares held by insiders.

The age is part of the number

The cell reads, for example, 1.04 M, 33 days: an estimated float of 1.04 million shares, from a share count filed 33 days ago. Past 120 days the figure turns red, because an offering could have happened since. And when nothing usable has been filed, it simply says n/a.

Information, not a filter

Nothing sizes, refuses or triggers an order from this figure. It is there so you can see what you are looking at. If you keep your own float figures in the desk's float file, yours are used instead. A number you typed beats one the desk worked out.

Where a stock files from

When you arm a symbol, the live price carries a badge: the country on the company's own filings, not a guess from the ticker. Some companies show their state of incorporation instead, and the badge says so.

Straight from the SEC

Both come from the SEC's own public interfaces, on a background thread, never on the price or order path. No account and no key are needed. The gappers window carries the same float column, with the same mark.

Five safety checks

An estimate that is wrong is worse than none, because you would act on it. So five checks sit between the filings and the column: options are not shares, totals older than two years are ignored, a float of zero or less is refused, and a blank is shown as n/a, never as a number.