how is it determined if a stock has a low float?

Question

is there a calulation, or number of shares based on market cap?

Answer 1

It is a combination of factors like market cap, trading volume, trading turnover, etc.

I would say there is no standard method for saying a stock has a low float but recently many indexes like the S&P500 have added a float factor into their index calculations to re-weight stocks like Wal-Mart which has a high percentage of shares owned by the company's founding family and are not freely tradable in the market.

I would say though that trading turnover and trading volume usually identify stocks with a low float. Trading turnover is the amount of time it takes to trade all the shares 1 time (not physically). Market cap is also a good check against the turnover and volume.

Example: EDE Company has 1000 shares
I own 800 shares and cannot sell due to insider rules
so the float is 200 shares
The average volume/day is 200 shares.
so the turnover of the total amount is 5 days
the turnover of the float is 1 day.....
This is an example of a stock with a low float (only 20% of total shares) and the market then trades these alot.
You could also do a similar analysis comparing total market cap to float market cap....etc.

Answer 2

It is impossible to tell, except by trading volume
If there is a lot of trading volume, there is a lot of float. (shares available to be traded)
But OTC Shares and Pink SHEETS, are tightly controlled and even though there may be millions of shares they are held by and manipulated by the insiders of the company. So the "float " is non existant