Last week, Pandora IPO’s on the stock market with a single letter stock ticker – P. It thus joined a “prestigious” group of fewer than 26 companies to have a single letter stock ticker. Other members include Agilent, Macy’s, Ford (back from the dead), and Visa.

Does it really matter if you have a single letter? In the days of the Pony Express and ticker tapes (hence the term “ticker”), heavily traded stocks were given single letters to speed things up. Nowadays, it’s just a vanity play since we don’t use ticker tapes. Or the Pony Express (though some would argue the state of our postal service… never mind).

That reduces the number of available single letter stock tickers to six (I, J, Q, U, W, Z), so if you’re planning an IPO and want to snag one of these, I’d move quickly!

Here are the current holders of single letter stock tickers (accurate as of June 2011):
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If you’re a personal finance stats junkie like me, you’d love the IRS Data Book. It is chock full of fun and interesting statistics that give you a glimpse of one of the more private havens in one’s life – their tax return. While you can’t sneak a peek at your neighbor’s return, you can guess some interesting facts about American society through our tax returns.

I take a romp through the IRS Data Book and pull out a few fun statistics that I found interesting, or surprising, and I hope you enjoy them too. All of the data is taken from the Excel spreadsheets for Fiscal Year 2010 but they also issue a PDF that summarizes some of the higher level statistics.

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I know it’s been a while since I did something trivia related so I thought that we might do something a little fun today. I had a lot of fun putting together 50 fun facts about money and thought why not put together a post on all the faces you see on our money? It’s not 50 facts, these probably aren’t as much fun as they are “Hmm… I didn’t know that,” but hopefully you have a little fun, learn a little something, and enjoy!

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I really enjoy trivia posts and had a lot of fun researching facts to include on my fifty fun facts about bank failures post, so I thought I’d bring it back. This time I wanted to cut out all the other stuff, like FDIC insurance facts and “first bank failure” type facts, and just look at the list of failures themselves.

The statistics were calculated from the FDIC’s list of failed banks and we used data going back to 2000.

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Did you know that in 2009 there were over five million millionaire households (5,129,385) in the United States? That’s 4.46% of all households and a number that is probably a lot higher than you expected, and a drop from the previous two years. In 2009 there were 5.6 million and nearly 6 million in 2007. Who knows what 2009 will bring but it’s still fun to look at statistics, even if you’re not a millionaire. Fortunately for us, our friends at Mainstreet had a fun little slideshow last week showing the states with the most and the fewest millionaires.

So, where are all the millionaires?

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Nowadays the highest denomination bill you can find is the $100 but back in the early 20th century, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was printing bills as high as $100,000 (1934-35). There aren’t any high denomination bills left, after printing was officially discontinued in 1969 by President Nixon. It was an attempt to combat organized crime and there while they are still legal tender, their value to collectors far exceeds their face value nowadays. There aren’t many left though, so if you find one, take very good care of it!

Let’s have some fun facts!
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If you’ve ever looked at a coin, chances are you’ve been interested in what was on it. There’s the year it was stamped, various Latin sayings, some images of buildings or famous individuals from US history, and there usually is a random letter. You probably know that the letter corresponds to the Mint facility that produced the coin, but what letter stands for what? How Mint facilities are there? Where are they located?

The United States Mint is the agency in the United States Government responsible for the production of coins used in the US. It was created in 1792 by the Coinage Age of 1792 and put within the State Department. Later that year, the Mint opened its main branch in Philadelphia, PA and soon expanded to include several facilities across the United States. In 1799, with the Coinage Act of 1873, it was made an independent agency.

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Every time I get home, I pull out any change I have and throw it into a small container. As I was pulling out quarters to put in my car, I noticed a nickel that looked different from the one beside it. It was a 1941-P (it actually didn’t have a letter, which means it was minted in Philadelphia) and looked more gray than the 2001-P right next to it. Not being a numismatist, I searched online to see if there was anything special about it.

There wasn’t, it was just old and beat up. They wouldn’t be a little more special until mid-1942, until 1945) when “Wartime Nickels” were produced. Wartime nickels were made of 56% Copper, 35% Silver, and 9% Manganese rather than 75% Copper and 25% Nickel.

That led me to reading more about coins and learning about the most valuable regular U.S. coin. I wanted to find a coin you could conceivably have in your pocket or piggy bank and just not know. I wasn’t looking for the 1805 Silver Dollar, worth $10.1 million, or the 1933 Double Eagle, worth $8.5 million (more exceptionally valuable U.S. coins). If you have one of those, you know it.

No, I wanted a regular coin.
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If you’ve seen any conspiracy theory movies involving Freemasons or other secret societies, you probably remember numerous references to the Great Seal of the United States on the reverse of the one dollar bill. Stories about secret societies make for great movies but real life is probably less glamorous (it always is!). I thought it would be interesting to look at the seal, as many have done beforehand, and explain a little of the imagery.

The image on the left, with the pyramid, is considered the reverse (back) side of the seal. The image on the right, with the eagle, is considered the obverse (front) side. In 1776, Congress established a three-person committee to design the Seal, but they never completed the task. Over the next six years, two more committees were formed until a final design was assembled by Charles Thomson, secretary to Congress, in 1782.

Obverse Side

The most prominent part of the Seal is the bald eagle, representative of liberty and freedom. In his talons are an olive branch (the strong right talon) and a bundle of thirteen arrows (the weaker left talon), with the eagle always looking towards the olive branch. The olive branch represents peace while the arrows represent war, thus representing the fact that the power to declare peace and war were the right of Congress alone. The thirteen arrows represent the thirteen colonies and strength in unity. On the eagle’s chest is a shield with thirteen red (6) and white (7) stripes supporting the blue, signifying that it is the states (stripes) who support the federal government (blue). “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one) is written on the ribbon clutched in the eagle’s beak, reinforcing the idea that the federal government comes out of the authority of the states. Finally, the constellation of thirteen stars breaking through the clouds signifies that this new federal government, with thirteen states, should take its place among the other sovereign nations.

Reverse Side

The reverse side is less exciting but has several bits of imagery worth checking out. First, of course, is the pyramid that dominates the Seal. The pyramid represents strength and duration, much like the great Pyramids at Giza still remain. The pyramid has thirteen levels, though that was explicitly called out in the original design. Atop the pyramid is the Eye of Providence, or God, to watch over. Over the eye, there is the Latin phrase “Annuit Cœptis,” which loosely translates to “favors undertakings.” It referred to Providence, or God, favoring the undertakings of the United States. The other Latin phrase, Novus ordo seclorum, translates to “New Order of the Ages.” Finally, the Roman numeral MDCCLXXVI, at the base of the pyramid, translates to 1776.

Fun Facts

1. The obverse side of the Great Seal is used to emboss the design onto Treaties and other official documents and stored in the Exhibit Hall of the Department of State.
2. Benjamin Franklin wanted a wild turkey instead of the eagle, but that never made it into the final design.
3. The Secretary of State is the official custodian of the Great Seal.
4. In the original design submitted by one of the Great Seal committees, the eagle was a phoenix. The phoenix represented how the United States rose from the ashes of the Revolutionary War against England. The phoenix, however, never appeared on the official Seal.
5. The Seal didn’t appear on the dollar bill until 1935.
6. The shield on the Seal has 6 red and 7 white stripes while the United States flag has 7 red and 6 white stripes.
7. On many flags and seals with shields, the shield is often supported by other figures. It was important that the shield be supported by the eagle, indicating the United States ought to rely on itself for support.
8. God is refered to as Providence in the closing sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
9. Novus ordo seclorum, New Order of the Ages, comes from the fourth Eclogue of Virgil. Virgil was a very famous Latin poet and the Eclogues were one of three of his major works.
10. The obverse side of the seal is very similar to the Seal of the President of the United States. There are some minor differences but the general imagery is the same with one exception. Until 1945, when President Truman signed Executive Order No. 9646 and specified the design of the Seal, the eagle faced right and towards the arrows.

Hope you enjoyed the trivia!

That’s the proclamation of the stock market in a resounding fashion.

I always find it entertaining when pundits draw ridiculous correlation relationships between the stock market and [insert something popular at the time]. This time, it’s the winner of the Presidential election in November and the performance of the stock market three months beforehand.

What’s fun is that the CNBC article, Who’s the Next President? The Stock Market Might Know, was written on August 26th – predating all the thick of the market turmoil. The largest single day drop of 777.68 in the Dow didn’t occur until September 29th, almost a month later. The second largest single day drop of 733.08 in the Dow didn’t occur until the 15th of October! (though we did see the single largest point gain on Oct. 13th, a gain of 936.42 in between).

So, you might be wondering how the recent changes in the market have affected the chances of our candidates?

According to the article, an up market in the three months prior to an election signaled victory for the incumbent party 80% of the time, since 1928. At the time the article was written, the S&P 500 was up about 2%. As of Monday’s close, Oct. 20th, the S&P had fallen from it’s August 1st close of 1,269.42 to 985.40. -22.4%!!! Incumbents aren’t looking too good here.

“A poor stock market performance usually anticipates and/or accompanies a weak economy—and that usually leads to the ouster of the ruling party and its president (think Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush).” – Heh, talk is of a recession, a bad recession in part caused by a freezing of the credit markets in a manner not seen in quite some time.

The article goes on to discuss a few other fun frivolous statistics like this one:

Since 1833, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has posted an average gain of 6.7 percent in presidential election years, with 20 up years and 14 down ones.| Even if the Dow does turn around and close higher than its 13,264.82 opening level in 2008, history shows it will be an inferior gain to the year before-election year category, when the blue-chip index has gained an average of 10.6 percent and notched 32 up years.

I’m not going out on a limb when I say the chances of the Dow closing above 13,264.82 this year is nil, I think we’re looking at one of those times when we’re in the minority of all those statistics