>In July, 1995, MS had several closes over 100, and was as high as 107 or 109 momentarily. 3-4 months later they closed below 80, and spent significant time in the low 80's. Further, they were in the low 80's as late as Jan, 1996. If you look back at my post, I am predicting a similar scenario now, with a drop to the low 60's by summer.>
Mark, things were so much different back then. For one, we saw a cyclical peak in technology stock in general--and a cyclical bear market in semiconductor stocks. Also, a major drag on MSFT were the fears that Microsoft had missed the paradigm shift to the internetworked computing world. Remember how even Goldman Sach's Rick Sherlund (Goldman is MSFT's investment bank, and Sherlund is a close friend of Bill Gates as well as MSFT's "guru" analyst) downgraded MSFT for that reason? Meanwhile, the internet stocks were running like mad! Windows 95 was over, and there was basically nothing to look forward too....
Anyway, this time, MSFT is unquestionably an internet force. Better still, they have many key products spread through the pipeline. For the next several years (at least) Windows NT will be a huge growth engine for MSFT. For now, it's NT4. In about 6-9 months, NT5. And in mid-late 1998, 64-bit NT (with Intel's Merced processor). Office 97 was just released. Windows 97 coming in mid-1997. BackOffice is showing tremendous growth....
And the above is only a small sampling of their pipeline. Lest we not forget their content initiatives, development tools, games, Windows CE, etc. In short, MSFT is more powerful than ever. For any long term investor, this stock should be a core holding....
Sal Habash |
