Low float stocks have almost no news
We looked for news on every stock our scanner alerted, in the 35 days before each alert. Across 78 stocks and 2,730 stock days we found 76 news items. More than half the stocks had none at all. We also tested whether news predicts which ones double, and our test could not tell.
Last updated: 9 September 2026 · Educational, not financial advice.
What we checked
The sample is 78 closed positions from our own book, alerted between 2026-04-26 and 2026-08-31. We started with 87 and removed 9. Those were backfilled entries whose alert date was assigned after the fact, so the phrase "news before the alert" has no meaning for them.
For each of the 78 we pulled every news item dated in the 35 days before its alert date. That comes to 2,730 stock days of coverage.
We wrote the question and the test down before pulling any news. With a sample this small it is easy to try several time windows and keep the one that looks best, and that is how people talk themselves into findings that are not there.
There is almost no news
Across 2,730 stock days we found 76 news items. 45 of the 78 stocks, 58 percent of them, had no coverage at all in the 35 days before we alerted them. The busiest stock in the sample had 6 items.
The median stock had zero items in the week before its alert. That is true of the ones that went on to double and the ones that did not.
Does news predict which ones double?
Our test says no, and the test is too small to settle it. In the seven days before the alert, news appeared for 2 of the 14 stocks that went on to double, or 14.3 percent, and for 3 of the 64 that did not, or 4.7 percent.
That looks like a gap. It is not one we can stand behind. The 90 percent confidence interval for the doublers runs from 4.8 to 35.3 percent and for the rest from 1.9 to 11.2 percent. Those overlap. Fisher's exact test gives p = 0.2175.
We said before running it that 14 doublers could not detect anything smaller than about 25 percentage points. So this is a result we cannot read either way, rather than evidence that news does not matter. We also predicted the doublers would have less news than the rest, on the theory that the setup we look for is a quiet one. They had slightly more. We were wrong about the direction, and the sample is too small for that to mean anything either.
The little news there is comes from the filing desk
Two of the stocks that doubled had news in the week before the alert. Both were housekeeping notices rather than anything about the business.
One had a Nasdaq notice about a late annual filing. The other had a Nasdaq exception on its minimum bid price and an announcement of a share consolidation, which is a reverse split.
That second one is worth pausing on. A reverse split changes the share price without changing what the company is worth, and if you compare prices across one without adjusting for it you will see a move that never happened. We have written about how quickly these lists go stale for related reasons.
What this means if you screen these stocks
You cannot use news as a filter here, because for most of these stocks there is no news to filter on. Any screen that requires a recent headline would have thrown away more than half our sample before looking at the price.
It also explains something about the stocks themselves. These are companies small enough that no reporter is assigned to them and no analyst publishes on them. Whatever moves them is visible in price and volume before it is visible in words, which is why our own screen reads price and volume and nothing else.
Methodology and limits
The positions come from our published track record, which includes the losing trades. News came from a single commercial news feed, queried per ticker for the 35 days before each alert date. An item counts only if its date falls strictly before the alert date, so nothing from the alert day itself is included.
The outcome we tested is whether the stock later reached twice its alert price at any point. That is a question about the stock, not about what we earned on it, and it is a looser bar than the one our track record uses. Do not read these counts as performance figures.
Anyone is welcome to cite this with attribution. For the underlying per-ticker counts, email support@ignitionalerts.com.
- 76 news items across 2,730 stock days.
- 58% of the stocks had no news at all before their alert.
- News did not predict which ones doubled, but with 14 doublers the test was too small to settle it (p = 0.2175).
- The little coverage that exists is exchange compliance paperwork, including a reverse split.
Risk disclaimer: low-float and micro-cap stocks are among the most volatile, illiquid securities in the market; total loss is possible and nothing in this article is financial advice. Ignition Alerts is a research tool - it never tells you to buy or sell. Read the full risk disclosure.
Frequently asked questions
How much news do low float stocks get before a big move?
In our sample of 78 alerted stocks, 76 news items appeared across 2,730 stock days. 45 of the 78 stocks, 58 percent, had no news at all in the 35 days before the alert.
Does news predict which low float stocks double?
Our test could not tell. News appeared before 14.3 percent of the stocks that doubled and 4.7 percent of those that did not, but the confidence intervals overlap and Fisher's exact test gives p = 0.2175. With only 14 doublers the test cannot detect a difference smaller than about 25 percentage points.
What kind of news do these stocks get?
In our sample it was mostly exchange compliance paperwork: late filing notices, minimum bid price exceptions, and a share consolidation. Very little of it described the business.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is a count of news items about stocks a scanner alerted in the past. Low float stocks carry the risk of total loss, and past results do not predict future ones.