30 September 2008
Under the 'full-market capitalization' methodology, the total market capitalization of a company, irrespective of who is holding the shares, is taken into consideration for computation of an index. However, if instead of taking the total market capitalization, only the Free-float market capitalization of a company is considered for index calculation, it is called the Free-float methodology. Free-float market capitalization is defined as that proportion of total shares issued by the company which are readily available for trading in the market. It generally excludes promoters' holding, government holding, strategic holding and other locked-in shares, which will not come to the market for trading in the normal course. Thus, the market capitalization of each company in a Free-float index is reduced to the extent of its Free-float available in the market.