What is a stock’s outstanding shares?
The stock market 101 answer for “what is a stock’s outstanding shares” is the stock’s share float and restricted shares added together. Well that probably doesn’t do you much good. A better answer is it’s the share’s in the corporation that the corporation itself doesn’t have direct control over. It’s what percentage of the ownership in the company isn’t owned by the company itself. Restricted shares are those that can’t be traded on the open market. These are generally held by insiders, either people who work for the company or with the company or industry in a way that they could have inside information. This is to help ease trade manipulation either in buying or selling. Sorry, you can’t (not at least lawfully) let the public think something bad is going to happen, buy up cheap shares, then release a report that everything is fine.