25 April 2019: Microsoft reaches a $1 trillion market value
After strong cloud earnings, Microsoft's market value briefly topped $1 trillion on April 25, 2019, making it the third US company to reach the mark after Apple and Amazon. A decade earlier it had been written off as a slow-growing PC software company. Under Satya Nadella it shifted toward cloud computing and subscriptions. Investors who had sold it as a dinosaur missed one of the great corporate comebacks.
The lesson: Mature companies can reinvent themselves; a change at the top is worth watching closely.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Microsoft at the start of 2020 → $3,000 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 3.0 times the money, and $908 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Microsoft teaches: A great business bought at a silly price can still deliver a lost decade; Microsoft's profits grew for years while its 2000 valuation slowly deflated.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $46.00 | $10,435 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $86.00 | $5,581 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $160 | $3,000 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Microsoft? Every starting year and the full story →
More Microsoft history
- 30 January 2007: Windows Vista launches to consumers
- 13 March 1986: Microsoft goes public
- 4 April 1975: Microsoft is founded in Albuquerque
- 27 June 2008: Bill Gates' last day as a full-time Microsoft employee
- 4 July 1996: Hotmail declares independence from your ISP
- 12 July 2006: EU fines Microsoft for dragging its feet
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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