Company X has 8.27M shares outstanding: 1.55M owned by institutions (lionshares.com) 2.13M owned directors/officers/insiders (SEC Filing 14A) 8.27M - 1.55M - 2.13M = 4.59M Question #1: Where are these other 4.59M shares? (who holds them, are they owned by someone or just 'stored' somewhere until there's demand)? Question #2: Yahoo says the FLOAT on this stock is 6.4M. What exactly does this mean and which shares make up the float?
Here's MSFT info from Yahoo http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT Shares Outstanding: 10.79B Float: 9.21B % Held by Insiders: 14.66% 10.79-9.21=1.58 billion shares not in float 1.58/10.79 = 14.64% owned by insiders (why this is not 14.66 I don't know) From this example I am pretty sure (and I checked others to confirm) that the float is the number of shares owned by anyone other than insiders.
Float refers to shares that are rather mobile because they are not owned by the insiders or the institutions. So they are the shares that are normally in the hand of the public/speculators at least when market is said to be in the distribution phase since when market is said to be in accumulation phase - by insiders, institutions or big brokers/hedge funds/individuals that is to say by pool(s) that existed officially before 1929 and I dare say that they still exist unofficially today since officially they are forbidden since pools aim to manipulate the market (see Hedge Fund Manager Martin Armstrong's quote http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...652&highlight=Martin+and+Armstrong#post401652 ) - the purpose is on the contrary to capture this float so as to do anything they want with that notably inflate their price (from mathematical game theory's point of view, oligopolistic tendancy from big firms against the interest of the whole public is just rational behavior so wonder why some people pretend that it comes from plot theory they must be rather ignorant or idiot or hypocrit ). Because the float are usually huge even compared to the large pool's money (of course some just benefit from huge money credit from Central Bank since Central Bank are controlled by the same interest than these virtual pools so that their risk is backed by people's tax money since money creation = bonds emission = credits increase = future taxes increase), the accumulation or distribution phase need several passes that's why the market is "coiling" in these phases and people who are too impatient to buy or sell just get whipsawed during these periods.
Any shares that aren't RESTRICTED from being traded are included in the float (if an insider registers (Form 144)) his shares to be sold in some future period, than those shares become part of the float.... Is this correct?