Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac

"General Electric--ticker symbol GE--is the most widely held stock in the world. The company has some 5 million shareholders, 42 percet of them individuals. GE has about 10.6 billion shares outstanding. $1,000 invested in GE stock in 1993 would have multiplied to $5,250 by the end of 2004 (assuming reinvestment of all dividends). If you bought one share of stock before 1926, you would have had 4,608 shares in 2005, after all the stock splits."