[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]That's a legitimate question, and maybe you'll learn something new.Who does Microsoft work for? It's stock holders. Simple, right? Who has Microsoft failed? It's stock holders. Simple, right? So their main reason for generating money, they've failed at. Yet, it's hard to understand? Let's put it another way, if you bought Microsoft stock 10 years ago, you'd be able to sell your stock for 10% less. That's good? Let's figure in inflation, and you've basically lost your shirt with this failing, yes failing, company.Let's look at some other tech stocks, that are really big. Apple? Well, they went up 60x in that time period. Another software giant, which is probably more comparable would be Oracle. They went up 2.5x in that time period. IBM sells a lot of software too, they doubled in that time period. Google is basically a software company too, and Microsoft competes with them quite a bit. Guess what? They went up 5.5x in less than eight years. Anyway you look at it, a stock that goes down 10% over ten years is a failure. There are definitely worse failures, but that doesn't change that Microsoft's situation. It wouldn't change the fact you've suffered badly as a stock holder, and wouldn't make it less painful. And, at the end of the day, Microsoft's primary responsibility is to work for their stockholders. And they've failed.[/citation]
MS's stock is one of the best investments possible. Do you not understand the concept of a split? MS does them often to keep their stock price low enough for the average investor while still giving a lot of payback in investments. Since the mid or late 90s, the value of a buying a single MS stock back then has gone up something like 30,000 percent thanks to the many splits that MS has done.Thirty THOUSAND percent!
Compared to Apple's ridiculously volatile stock pricing (went down like $200 in less than a week recently), MS's decently paced and steady improvement in value thanks to splits is a god-send for a smart investor. You buy a stock and a couple to a few years later, it may be the same price, but you splits mean that you can now have several of that stock and at the same price, that's a up to a several hundred percent improvement in value!