What is Free Float on the PSX?
Free float is the portion of a company's shares actually available for public trading — total shares minus sponsor, government, strategic, and other locked-in holdings. PSX uses free float for index weighting and futures position limits.
How it works
PSX recalculates free float periodically from pattern-of-shareholding filings. A company can be huge by market capitalization yet have a small float, making its price easy to move on modest volume.
Float is the denominator that turns raw positioning numbers into meaningful ones: futures open interest, blank sales, and margin financing are all best read as a percentage of free float, since that measures how much of the truly tradable supply is spoken for.
Common questions
Why do the KSE-100 weightings use free float instead of market cap?
Free-float weighting makes the index reflect investable reality — shares nobody can buy (sponsor or state holdings) don't drive index weight, which reduces distortion from tightly held companies.