3

I was looking at a stock recently, Gamestop GME, and noticed that the float was currently sitting at 250million shares.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GME/key-statistics?p=GME

This seems like potentially a bug/issue, because the other sites are not reporting a float anywhere close to this number, and also the other values which are %'s, do not reflect the 250mil.

But, in checking other sources, they are vastly different than what Yahoo financed showed before today (around 70 million).

What factors can alter/change a stocks total float of shares?

Improve this question
2
  • Looks like a bug - free float can't be greater than shares outstanding.
    – David
    Commented Sep 11, 2021 at 13:57
  • 1
    It’s still at 250 million and is increasing in value, seems like a strange bug. Could the float be higher with naked shorting?
    – DjangoBlockchain
    Commented Sep 12, 2021 at 1:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

This appears to have been an error and has been fixed on Yahoo! Finance, which now shows a float of 61.83M shares out of 76.48M. Float are those shares outstanding that are held by investors who aren't locked in, so is a strictly smaller number than shares outstanding.

To answer your explicit question: splits, buybacks, secondary offerings, stock dividends and mergers are the most common ways for the shares outstanding to change, which in turn changes the free float. Locked-in shares can also be converted into free float, either after a specific amount of time has passed, or for other reasons. This isn't relevant to the Yahoo! GME error, though.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .