"What's the best source for float data?"
By Dave Mabe
Here's a question from long-time list member Charles B. (name used with permission, lightly edited for clarity.)
Charles B:
Following your Bionic Trader calls with Garrett and Tim from SMB Capital, I decided to go back to the drawing board and start again building AFL code for my Gap & Fade small-cap strategy.
It uses five criteria to find an A+ stock — one is knowing the company's float level, under 10M. IQFeed doesn't carry float, so I'm looking at vendors that can feed it into my setup. I'm leaning toward Financial Modeling Prep (FMP), mainly because it returns true float, not shares outstanding — but I'd value your take before I commit.
Is there a float source you trust more for small caps? And anything you think I'm missing?
Dave:
Float is an important data point and surprisingly difficult to find good sources for.
The best source for float is Bloomberg, but the cost is out of reach for most traders, and they make it difficult to export for use in a backtest.
The next best source is Dilution Tracker, generally known among full-time traders as a solid source for this and other offering-type information.
Another source that most traders overlook is Trade-Ideas.
Float is one of the available columns/filters.
When I was CTO, we used a variety of data providers for float, and it ended up being the best among the lower-priced sources.
Trade-Ideas has the advantage that you can easily use the same data point as a filter for an alert window.
It's not obvious how you can export data from Trade-Ideas, but it's not as hard as most traders think.
Here's a video documenting the process (just add Float and whatever other columns you want into your Top List).
Good question, Charles, and thanks for sharing with the list!
-Dave
P.S. Do you wish you had a column library that would tell YOU how to make your strategy profitable? My column library is now included with MabeKit Get Instant Access