Key takeaways · 6
ipos 6mlists every stock that has traded for about 126 sessions or fewer and sorts them youngest first; appendfloat<40m rs>80to keep the thin, strong ones.- A newly public company usually has most of its shares outstanding locked under a 90-to-180-day insider agreement, so its float percent sits near the lowest it will ever be.
- Float in the terminal is a share count, aliased
flt, not a percentage. Float percent isfp, shares outstanding isshares, and there is no price or close field anywhere. - Young names read blank on the 6-month return, the 1-year return, Power, and coil, because those need 126 to 253 sessions of history a fresh listing does not have. A blank is honest emptiness, not a zero.
- A lockup expiry can multiply the float overnight, so a low-float IPO read goes stale faster than any other float screen. Rerun it often and check where a name sits in its lockup window.
- Pair the screen with
dollarvol>10mso you do not mistake a thin float for a tradeable one, and remember an RS rank on a young name is computed off a short window, so outcomes are wide.
The newest, thinnest corner of the float universe
Recent IPOs are where a float is at its thinnest. When a company lists, the founders, early employees, and pre-IPO investors almost always sit under a lockup, a contract that bars them from selling for a set window after the offering, usually somewhere between 90 and 180 days. Until that window ends, a large slice of the shares outstanding simply cannot trade. So the float, the shares actually free to change hands, is often near the lowest it will ever be in the company's public life. In the tickerstance terminal, ipos 6m float<40m rs>80 puts that idea to the tape in one line: recent listings, a thin float, and a relative-strength rank near the top.
The reason to care about a thin float is old and mechanical. Fewer shares available to trade means less stock standing in the way of the bid, so a given amount of buying moves price further. William O'Neil folded it into the S of CANSLIM, supply and demand. A fresh listing under lockup is that supply squeeze in its most extreme form, because the locked shares are not merely scarce. They are contractually frozen for a known period.
Pairing recently listed with thin float and strong relative strength narrows the field to the youngest names where the supply squeeze is real and the tape is already treating them as leaders. That is a different population from the usual low-float screen, and the terminal builds it in a single command.
Why a fresh listing has the lowest float percent
Float percent is the fraction of shares outstanding that actually floats, and a newly public company is where that fraction bottoms out. Shares outstanding counts every share the company has issued. Float counts only the ones free to trade. The gap between them is the locked stock: insider holdings, restricted shares, and the pre-IPO stakes still waiting on the lockup clock.
For illustration, take a company that listed three months ago with 60 million shares outstanding, of which 45 million are still locked. Its float is 15 million shares, and its float percent is 25%. The same company a year later, with the lockup long expired and most holders free to sell, might float 50 million of those 60 million shares, a float percent above 80%. Nothing about the business changed. The tradeable supply just unfroze.
That is why the recent-IPO window matters so much for supply. You are not looking at a permanently small company. You are looking at a temporary state, a float held artificially low by a contract with an expiry date. The terminal keeps the two readings separate: float<40m filters on the raw share count, and fp shows the percentage if you want to see how much of the company is still frozen.
The command, clause by clause
ipos is a source, not a filter. It starts your query from the set of recently listed names rather than the whole universe. Bare ipo defaults to one trading year, about 252 sessions. Add a window to tighten it: ipos 6m keeps names that have traded for roughly 126 sessions or fewer, ipos 3m for a quarter, ipos 7d for the freshest listings of the week. Whatever window you pick, the command sorts youngest first, so the newest names sit at the top.
Everything after the window is a predicate, and space-separated predicates are ANDed together. float<40m keeps names with fewer than 40 million tradeable shares, where the m suffix means millions. rs>80 keeps the names ranked in the top fifth of the universe by relative strength, on the 0-to-99 percentile scale. Read as a whole, ipos 6m float<40m rs>80 says: listed within about the last six months, floating under 40 million shares, and stronger than 80% of the market right now.
You can keep stacking. dollarvol>10m adds a liquidity floor, fp<30 filters on float percent directly, shares<80m caps shares outstanding. Each clause you add narrows the survivors. None of them reference price, because the terminal carries no price or close field. Float, dollar volume, and relative strength are the levers up here.
ipos 6m float<40m rs>80 decoded clause by clause, with a worked float-percent example. Everything the terminal prints here is end-of-day.
When the terminal goes blank, and why that is the point
Run this screen and you will see empty cells, more of them than on any other list. A fresh IPO reads blank on its 6-month return, its 1-year return, its Power rating, and its coil score. That is not a bug and it is not a zero. Those metrics need history the stock does not have yet. The 6-month return needs 126 sessions, the 1-year return and Power need a full 252 to 253, and coil needs about a quarter of a year of bars before it will compute. A company that listed eight weeks ago cannot have a one-year return, so the terminal prints nothing rather than faking one.
This is the honest-blank principle, and a recent-IPO screen is where it shows up most. A blank means the measurement is not defined yet, not that the value is bad. The float cluster's low-float leaders board on the 2026-07-09 close carried exactly this: young names like ELOX and TJGC sat on the list with blank Stage and Power cells, too fresh to score. They were not weak. They were new.
So read a young name for what is actually there. Relative strength, float, and dollar volume will be populated, because they can be computed off a short window. Power, the long-horizon return columns, and coil will not. Treating the blank as information, the market has not had time to form a full opinion, is more honest than reaching for a number that does not exist.
The two ways this read can burn you
The first is the lockup flood. The same expiry that keeps a float low is a date on a calendar, and when it passes, the locked shares become sellable all at once. A stock that floated 15 million shares on Monday can float 50 million the day the lockup lifts. Every supply figure you screened on goes stale in a single session. A low-float IPO read is the most perishable float screen there is, so it is worth knowing where a name sits in its lockup window before you lean on the thinness at all.
The second is the liquidity trap. Thin float and thin trading often travel together, and a name can clear float<40m rs>80 while barely trading enough dollars a day to get in or out cleanly. That is what dollarvol>10m is for. It puts a floor on 50-day average dollar volume so the survivors are at least liquid enough to consider. Without it, a small float can read like an opportunity when it is really just a name nobody trades.
There is a third, quieter caveat. A young stock has almost no track record, so its relative-strength rank is computed off a short window, and short windows are noisy. A high RS on a name that has traded for six weeks is a weaker statement than the same RS on a name with years of history behind it. The outcomes are simply wider up here, in both directions.
Where to run it
The IPO source, the float and float-percent filters, the relative-strength rank, and the liquidity floor all live in the tickerstance terminal, where one typed line puts a question to the last close. The interactive terminal is a Pro feature at $28 a month, grandfathered, so the price you join at is the price you keep. Everything it computes is end-of-day and point-in-time honest, blanks and all.
Open the terminal and type ipos 6m float<40m rs>80. It will hand you the youngest, thinnest, strongest listings on the tape, along with a column of honest blanks where the history does not exist yet. What that means for your own book, whether a lockup two weeks out changes the picture, whether the liquidity is enough for your size, is a judgment the terminal does not make. It reports the conditions. The trade is yours.
Frequently asked questions
How do I screen for recent IPOs with a small float?
In the tickerstance terminal, ipos 6m float<40m rs>80 starts from stocks that have listed within about the last six months, then keeps the ones with fewer than 40 million tradeable shares and a top-fifth relative-strength rank. ipos is a source that sorts youngest first, and space-separated predicates are ANDed. Change the window with ipos 3m or ipos 1y.
Why do newly public stocks have such a low float?
Because most of their shares are locked. Founders, employees, and pre-IPO investors usually sit under a lockup that bars selling for 90 to 180 days after the offering, so a large slice of shares outstanding cannot trade yet. Until the lockup expires, the float is near the lowest it will ever be, and float percent bottoms out.
What is the difference between float and float percent in the terminal?
Float is a share count, aliased flt, so float<40m means fewer than 40 million tradeable shares. Float percent is fp, the fraction of shares outstanding that actually floats, so fp<30 means less than 30% of the company is free to trade. Shares outstanding is shares. There is no price field anywhere in the terminal.
Why does a recent IPO show blank for Power and returns?
Because those metrics need history the stock does not have. Power and the 1-year return need about 252 sessions, the 6-month return needs 126, and coil needs roughly a quarter of a year of bars. A company that listed weeks ago cannot compute them, so the terminal prints a blank rather than a fake zero. Relative strength, float, and dollar volume still populate off the short window.
How fast does a low-float IPO screen go stale?
Faster than any other float screen. A lockup expiry can multiply the float overnight, turning a 15-million-share float into 50 million in a single session. Because the whole read rests on the locked supply, it can be undone by one calendar date, so it is worth rerunning often and checking where a name sits in its lockup window.
Should I add a liquidity filter to an IPO screen?
It is worth it. Thin float and thin trading often travel together, so add dollarvol>10m to put a floor on 50-day average dollar volume. That keeps the survivors liquid enough to actually consider and stops a small float from reading like an opportunity when it is really a name nobody trades.