I have been thinking about this for a few days after reading the Wired article about Satya Madella and his philosophy/culture for the company.

Specifically his thoughts on moving Microsoft towards being a company whose products work across any platform - even those controlled by competitors - to help people be more productive.

I recently started using microsoft outlook for my mail on my iphone and I must say I am impressed. Like some have written, it maybe the best email app out right now for ios.

And then you have all the buzz about Project HoloLens.

I'm wondering if this maybe a turning point for Microsoft.

What do you guys think?

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MSFT

Do your research of course but id say its a buy

does it really matter?

wonder what bin's doing?
http://i.imgur.com/phECCMp.jpg

i also forgot to mention in the OP that they also recently hired a new VP of design who was previously with Adobe and Nike. which seems like a good look as well.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-hires-michael-gough-corporate-140000476.html

but yeah just curious to see if other folks are starting to see microsoft in a new light as well. i have never looked at them as being innovative but my view is beginning to shift.

how high do you expect it to go? If you're gonna buy, buy for the long term. MSFT has a high floor and pays dividends all the time.

my thoughts so far are purely based on what I am seeing the company doing and the shifts i perceive in their business model.

i was hoping folks who follow from a financial perspective, like yourself, to give their thoughts and input as well from the big picture perspective.

and yes, my thoughts are long term. not in and out.

And yes buy and hold like billy buffet


does it really matter?

wonder what bin's doing?
http://i.imgur.com/phECCMp.jpg

stock?

How much do you need to get some real loot from it?

I never paid attention to stocks.

halp.

You can scale that up by buying however many shares you want.
If you buy one share and the price moves up a dollar, your payoff will be $1.
If you buy 1000 shares and the price moves up a dollar, your payoff will be $1000.

Same works on the downside (i.e. if price falls buy a dollar you will lose $1000).

Those commission fees discourage tiny investments though.
If you buy just one share, you need the price to go up by about $9 for it to even begin being profitable for you.
But if you bought 1000 shares, a very tiny increase in price ($0.009) gets you in profitable territory

in the barest, dumbest language possible

I'm so naive on what investing is, how to invest and what to invest in

would love some advice and knowledge, in particular pertaining to the OPs post

This is going to very overly simplistic. No talk about risk, interest rates, and discounting which are all VERY essential.
I am against stock picking, so that viewpoint will color my description.
And I am not a financial advisor


A share of stock just represents ownership in a company. If you buy one share of Microsoft stock you literally own (albeit, a very tiny piece) Microsoft.
And as an owner you are entitled to a proportional amount of Microsoft's assets and profits.

That Microsoft stock only has value because they there is the assumption that they will payout some of their profits to the shareholders throughout the future. These profit payouts are called dividends.

Let's say OKP Corp is only going to be around for 3 years. And owners of OKP Corp stock will get a $3 payment (dividend) every year. What is the most you will be willing to pay for this today, i.e. what is the price today?
Well, it will be the sum of what you expect to receive from holding it: $3 + $3 + $3 = $9.

Now let's say expectations change and you expect OKP to be more profitable. And as a result, you think they will pay larger dividends ($4 per year).
So now the price will be $4 + $4 + $4 = $12.

If you bought the stock before expectations changed you would have a $3 profit on your investment.


Similarly the price of Microsoft's stock is just the sum of each of those expected dividend payments they will make in the future.
If you think the price is too low today, that means you think that people's expectations about Microsoft's future profits are too low (i.e. they are underestimating Microsoft's growth).


A problem with this thinking is that the price represents the market's expectations.
There are millions of investors out there (many of which are highly informed) buying and selling this stock to the point where the price you see in the newspaper represents the average of everyone's expectations for Microsoft's future performance.

By taking a stance and saying this is definitely a stock to buy, you are basically saying that I know something that no one else knows.
But all these analysts, researchers, and other investors have all the same info you have (and much, much more).
So instead what you are saying is that they are not interpreting the information properly.

At the end of the day, the price of Microsoft at any given time represents everybody's expectations about future dividends, given the current available information.
New information to come is just as likely to be good as it is bad.
And as a result, the price is just as likely to go up as it is to go down

*Stock picking is a coin flip*

Buying stocks doesn't mean u think u have info no one else does

It means u expect the company to be more valuable at a future date. As a shareholder your shares will likewise increase in value


Ex- The expectation that apple is a good buy is based on the millions of existing iphone fans, current biz figures, forecasts of future earnings, etc


And tons of companies don't offer dividends

The price right now represents what people think today about the future of the company.

With your Apple example, all investors (maybe I should say most) know all that stuff.
They read the reports, they looked at financial statements, announcements, analyst forecasts, etc. Everything you have access to has already been scoured over.
And based on all that information, the market has determined the value of the company is $118.

So you would trade at that price for two reasons.
1). If you think the market is wrong in their interpretation of that information. And keep in mind who is participating in these markets.
There are highly skilled institutions with resources devoted to finding mispriced companies.

2). You have information that nobody else has.


>
>And tons of companies don't offer dividends
>
The assumption is that these companies eventually will pay dividends. If they will never, ever, ever, ever pay a dividend, then the price will be zero

For example, Google has never paid a dividend in their history. But they will eventually when it becomes a better option to payout profits rather than reinvest back into the company

but every qtr, one data point moves from the estimated column to the actual

and the market reacts and share price adjusts accordingly


its disingenous to say stocks are a coinflip

or that the millions of investors in apple, etc all believe they have inside info or think the other {million-1} investors are wrong


especially against the backdrop of the overall longterm growth of the US economy

http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart

If I asked you is the price of Apple going to go up or down tomorrow, what would you say?
If you could say either way with any degree of certainty, you would be a very, very rich man.

But in reality, it's just as likely to go up tomorrow as it is down.

The reason why is because the price today reflects everything we know today as well as what we expect for the future (given what we know today)
The only way the price will change tomorrow is if new info comes in that changes either the current situation or our expectations.

Any truly brand new information is just as likely to be better than expected as it is worse than expected.

If you can't predict price changes on a day to day basis, what makes you think you can do the same over a long time horizon?


>
>especially against the backdrop of the overall longterm growth
>of the US economy
>
>http://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart
>
>

Yes, you can see an upward trend in the growth of the US economy (and the Dow Jones).
But your investment performance will depend on the time period you happen to be investing in.

If you started investing in 1999 and bought and held the market (S&P 500), you are just now starting to make money again.

You can plug in different dates here and look at the cumulative returns for different investment windows and see how they would have performed
http://dqydj.net/sp-500-return-calculator/

But The company's old business is "boring"
PCs dying off for phones and tablets


And the new businesses are going up against the other giants- apple, goog, fb


Id look at Any major growth after the run last year as just a bonus

>I have been thinking about this for a few days after reading
>the Wired article about Satya Madella and his
>philosophy/culture for the company.
>
>Specifically his thoughts on moving Microsoft towards being a
>company whose products work across any platform - even those
>controlled by competitors - to help people be more productive.
>
>
>I recently started using microsoft outlook for my mail on my
>iphone and I must say I am impressed. Like some have written,
>it maybe the best email app out right now for ios.
>
>And then you have all the buzz about Project HoloLens.
>
>I'm wondering if this maybe a turning point for Microsoft.
>
>What do you guys think?

They have me, a Microsoft hater as a staff, record label, and a motherfucking care, considering Windows as an option. They're transforming into a mix of Apple and Microsoft. He's doing what his predecessors couldn't bring new people into the ecosystem without compromising Microsoft's brand. Microsoft faces intense competition outside of Windows. He made their productivity suite free on mobile which boosted subscribers elsewhere.

All I need him to do is bring some of those Microsoft products and services over to Xbone to convince me to buy one. Bring back the Zune while we at it.

For the last 15 years. Apart from XBox which they went to great pains to separate from the rest of the brand, it hasn't worked.

I'm very sceptical that they'll present a genuine worry to Google or Android in the mobile market.

Nobody's taking them in the business OS/licensing world and I feel like they should consolidate in this area rather than trying to get involved with more 'vital' markets that they've continually failed to grasp.

>I have been thinking about this for a few days after reading
>the Wired article about Satya Madella and his
>philosophy/culture for the company.
>
>Specifically his thoughts on moving Microsoft towards being a
>company whose products work across any platform - even those
>controlled by competitors - to help people be more productive.
>
>
>I recently started using microsoft outlook for my mail on my
>iphone and I must say I am impressed. Like some have written,
>it maybe the best email app out right now for ios.
>
>And then you have all the buzz about Project HoloLens.
>
>I'm wondering if this maybe a turning point for Microsoft.
>
>What do you guys think?

>For the last 15 years. Apart from XBox which they went to
>great pains to separate from the rest of the brand, it hasn't
>worked.
>
>I'm very sceptical that they'll present a genuine worry to
>Google or Android in the mobile market.
>
>Nobody's taking them in the business OS/licensing world and I
>feel like they should consolidate in this area rather than
>trying to get involved with more 'vital' markets that they've
>continually failed to grasp.

AS long as they protect and innovate in those businesses, they'll have the money to dabble in other things and maybe, someday, hit on the next big thing.

I wouldn't count on it, either, but the stock is worth considering for the stability and dividends alone.

What I'd really like to see is MS become the cool place for smart talented people to work.

Also want to see a Windows every platform OS that is worth a damn.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're r

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/02/11/official-microsofts-acquired-sunrise-calendar-app