4 Low Float, Highly Volatile Stocks To Keep An Eye On

A handful of under-the-radar stocks are making massive moves on Wednesday as momentum traders pile into some particularly explosive small-cap stocks.

The Movers

Amedica Corporation AMDA spiked 50 percent in a little over an hour on Wednesday morning before traders swooped in to take profits, driving the stock back down near Tuesday’s closing price. Amerdica has a tiny market cap of only about $10.2 million, and its float is only 33.5 million shares, according to Yahoo Finance.

Meridian Waste Solutions Inc MRDN is up more than 24 percent on huge volume on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of only $13.2 million and a float of only 6.6 million shares.

SemiLEDs Corporation LEDS is also soaring more than 46 percent on Wednesday ahead of its Q4 earnings report due out after the close. Unless word of the numbers have leaked, speculative earnings bets seem to have triggered the move. SemiLEDs has a market cap of only $14.4 million and a float of only 1.6 million shares.

Finally, the biggest mover of the day is CHF SolutionsCHFS (formerly Sunshine Heart), which is up an incredible 517 percent on Wednesday on no major news from the company. Entering Wednesday, the stock had a minuscule market cap of only $2.3 million, a float of only 530,000 shares and a staggering short percent of float of 45.4 percent.

What’s Going On Here?

It’s likely that some or all of these moves are short squeezes, but there’s more at play than the typical short squeeze. These stocks all have extremely low floats, the number of shares available for trading on the opening market. A stock’s float may be significantly lower than the number of shares outstanding.

Stocks with extremely low floats don't even need high short interest to make explosive moves. Low floats mean that short sellers often don’t have access to borrowable shares to take the bearish side of a trade when a low-float stock begins to take off.

The combo of huge demand from momentum traders and no supply for short sellers can produce some crazy short-term swings in share prices like the ones mentioned above.

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