A lock up period is a predetermined amount of time following an initial public offering during which employees and close associates of the company who are given shares are not allowed to sell those shares. Generally, a lock in period is a condition of exercising an employee stock option. An initial public offering (IPO) is the first sale of a corporations common shares to investors on a public stock exchange. ... See stock (disambiguation) for other meanings of the term stock A stock, also referred to as a share, is commonly a share of ownership in a corporation. ... An Employee stock option is a call option on a companys own stock issued as a form of non-cash compensation. ...

A lock up period may also be referred to as a lock in, locked in, lock out, locked out, or locked up period. Any one of these variations may be hyphenated, such as "lock-up period", and variations with out or up may also be joined to form one word, such as "lockout period". This article is about the punctuation mark. ...