Economy

mahatmakanejeeves

(57,464 posts) Fri Oct 21, 2016, 12:39 PM Oct 2016

Microsoft Shares Hit All-Time High

So if you bought it at the end of 1999, you're finally in the money.

Microsoft Shares Hit All-Time High

Benefits from a pivot to cloud have sent the stock soaring nearly 17 years after its previous peak

By Jay Greene and Anne Steele

jay.greene@wsj.com
http://twitter.com/greene

anne.steele@wsj.com
http://twitter.com/AnneMarieSteele

Updated Oct. 21, 2016 12:01 p.m. ET

Shares of Microsoft Corp. jumped to an all-time high Friday in the wake of a positive earnings report, nearly 17 years after setting its previous high-water mark in the heyday of the dot-com boom.

The stock traded as high as $60.45 on Friday morning, eclipsing its previous midday trading high of $59.97. It recently traded at $59.99, up 4.8%.

In December of 1999, Microsoft shares closed at their highest level, $59.56, adjusted for a 2003 stock split. Back then, the stock soared on the software giant’s dominance of the PC operating system market and productivity applications. The company was riding the wave of internet use, which boosted demand for its software.

But as the dot-com bubble burst, Microsoft shares slid and then stagnated for nearly 13 years as the company wrestled with antitrust regulators and lagged behind rivals such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. on emerging tech trends such as mobile computing and web search.

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Microsoft Shares Hit All-Time High (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Oct 2016 OP

And if you bought it in 2011 you'd have well over doubled your money whatthehey Oct 2016 #1

Full disclosure: I own shares of Microsoft. mahatmakanejeeves Oct 2016 #2

whatthehey

(3,660 posts)

1. And if you bought it in 2011 you'd have well over doubled your money

Reply to mahatmakanejeeves (Original post)

Fri Oct 21, 2016, 12:55 PM

Oct 2016

I wouldn't call it a great buy at this point myself (no guru I FWIW) at 28+ PE but that cloud infrastructure is likely to come in handy and if they can keep convincing corporate CIOs to sign on to subscription pricing their core line is set. No foreseeable challenge, but precious little discrete profit, in their consumer PC dominance. That's seed money to hook users. Still with no real opposition on main software lines and only token resistance to new pricing models they should be solid enough. Resist the temptation to play in ancilliary arenas like phones and they're a decent bet.

mahatmakanejeeves

(57,464 posts)

2. Full disclosure: I own shares of Microsoft.

Reply to whatthehey (Reply #1)

Fri Oct 21, 2016, 01:00 PM

Oct 2016

I didn't buy in 1999, so I've been above water for a while. In retrospect, though, I shoulda bought....

Did you see the thread, down the list a bit in this forum, about the pension fund manager in who puts it all in a index fund?

I finally figured out how to put a document in Sharepoint a week ago. I did it all by myself!*

* I did have to read the explanatory email from my boss. Does that count as help?

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