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Top Dollars: There's more $100 bills in circulation than ever

Top Dollars: There's more $100 bills in circulation than ever

2/25/24 7:00PM

Benjamax

America's national wallet is stuffed with $100 bills. That’s the conclusion from Fed data reported by the WSJ, which reveals that the number of $100 bills in circulation has more than doubled between 2012 and 2022, making the Benjamin Franklin-bearing notes the most common US paper currency. As of 2022, there were 18.5 billion in circulation — 26% more than the number of $1 bills floating around — with plans to print up to another 1.6 billion $100 bills this year.

So, where are all these extra hundreds going?

Note taking

Aside from the Fed’s money-printing splurge in 2020, which saw the number of $20 notes go up by ~23% in a single year to support the Covid-stricken economy, much of the rise in the number of $100 notes has seen Americans increasingly use them as a means of storing cash, rather than spending it.

One explanation why denominations like the $100 bill tend to get saved is that larger bills enter circulation much faster than they leave, as consumers are more hesitant to part with them. Studies have shown that if people are given twenty $1 bills, they are much more likely to spend them than if they are given one$20 bill — a fascinating phenomenon known as the denomination effect. Another is that demand for US currency overseas has surged since the pandemic alongside mounting geopolitical instability in multiple countries, with more than half of all $100 bills estimated to be held abroad.

Regardless of the rise in hundreds, cards are still king: 60% of all payments are made with debit or credit cards, and, despite a greater volume being circulated, cash ranks behind those as the 3rd most-used payment method by number of transactions in the US… possibly because everyone’s storing it under their bed.

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The AI hype also follows a $590 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a bird flu vaccine announced Friday after market close. The company, which had struggled to keep up with investor expectations after its Covid vaccine revenue dried up, has seen its stock price shoot up almost 12% in the past week.

This week has also seen an abrupt shift in options market activity. Typically, nearly twice as many puts (options that benefit from a fall in the stock price) tied to Moderna have changed hands relative to calls (the opposite of puts) over the past month.

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On Tuesday, CNN reported that the online star, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, was part of an American group of investors assembled by Employer.com founder and CEO Jesse Tinsley. The consortium, made up of “institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals,” has submitted an all-cash bid, a spokesperson for the group said.

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Sales for its cancer-treating drugs Drazalex and Erleada were up more than 20% year over year, at $3 billion and $784 million, respectively. 

This comes right as generics for J&J’s blockbuster psoriasis drug Stelera entered the market in Canada and Europe. Sales for Stelera fell by 14.7% compared to the same point last year. 

J&J announced last week that it would acquire drugmaker Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion. That deal will add Caplyta, a drug that treats mental-health disorders and whose patent doesn’t expire until 2040, to its portfolio.

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