The float of a company whose stock is publicly traded has different default meanings depending on the presumed context. Without a qualifier it may refer to the entire market capitalization of the company or only its publicly traded equity.

Public float or the unqualified term may also refer to the number of outstanding shares in the hands of public investors as opposed to company officers, directors, or controlling-interest investors. Assuming the insider held shares are not traded, these shares are the publicly traded ones. The float is calculated by subtracting restricted shares from outstanding shares. For example, a company may have ten million outstanding shares, but only seven million are trading on the stock market. Therefore, this company's float would be seven million. Stocks with smaller floats tend to be more volatile than those with larger floats. Large holdings of founding shareholders, corporate cross-holdings and holdings of the Government in partially privatized companies are usually excluded while computing this sense of "public float".

Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی), (born 21 October 1943), is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.

He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008) and The Obama Syndrome (2010).

Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).