

Parsing Microsoft’s Massive 42% Gain In 2013 - ibsathish
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/14/parsing-microsofts-massive-42-gain-in-2013/

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ahi
[http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^ixic](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^ixic)
Bernanke's magic. TC articles should probably be autokilled.

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300bps
Nasdaq is up 28.07% YTD while Microsoft is up 37% YTD. That's quite an
accomplishment and can't be explained by the "rising tide" theory you are
putting forth.

Plus keep in mind that Apple is DOWN 4.38% YTD.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EIXIC+Interactive#symbo...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EIXIC+Interactive#symbol=^ixic;range=ytd;compare=aapl+msft;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;)

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RyanZAG
Let's try to reconcile your three facts:

    
    
      Average is positive.
      Microsoft up a bit more than the average.
      Apple down incredibly more than the average.
    

If most decent stocks went up by about 40% but a few stocks like Apple
actually went down, the average would be somewhere around 30%. This means that
Microsoft's stock could stay at par while others went down and Microsoft would
beat the average.

Steve leaving probably helped a couple percent, but it's just noise.

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300bps
As someone that works at an investment bank, your comment makes my head hurt.

The facts you cited aren't my facts; stocks and bonds are indexed to a
benchmark made up of their peers. Matching the index is expected, beating it
is great and underperforming it is really bad. For Apple and Microsoft, their
peers are in the NASDAQ index so that is the benchmark by which they are
judged.

Microsoft being up 37% in contrast to its benchmark being up 28% is not "a bit
more than the average". It is beating its benchmark by 32% which is an
incredibly good performance. Likewise, Apple underperformed its benchmark
horrifically.

Think about it this way - $100 invested that returns 37% compounded growth
over 8 years is now $1,240.98. However, $100 invested that returns 28%
compounded growth over 8 years is now $720.58. Hopefully you can see why your
downplaying of Microsoft's accomplishment seems a little silly. Oh, and the
same $100 invested in Apple over 8 years would now be $69.88.

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anonymoushn
Are percentages of percentages a useful thing to talk about? If the index was
flat and MSFT was up 1%, I wouldn't learn much from "Microsoft is beating its
benchmark by infinity%!"

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300bps
There are websites and whole communities of developers that happily use
Microsoft development technologies every day blissfully unaware of the
existence of communities like Hacker News.

Hacker News is the mirror image of those communities and as such remains
completely baffled by Microsoft's continued success while "nobody uses their
products."

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vyrotek
Things around here have gotten a little better since I joined HN. I put myself
in that camp of developers happily using Microsoft technologies. I've been on
HN for over 5 years and I feel the tone has changed a bit.

I was originally pretty surprised at the responses from the HN community when
I first shared that my startup was built on .Net and was happy with it. Now I
bump into many other startups around here built on .Net too and I'm seeing
more and more discussions about Azure and C#.

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001sky
Intersting premis for a conversation: MSFT up 42%

Not sure the TC article sheds any light on it, though.

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ibsathish
True. TC article does not shed any light on this. But, the fact the MSFT
failed to see the future in the last decade and becoming complacent about what
they had made to the reversal of fortunes. They missed to realize mobile &
cloud were multi-billion dollar opportunities. When they tried to make
adjustments, it was too late.

Nevertheless, the news of the moving of the man on top gave some cheers to the
wall street to go bang it and despite the fact they did not make any
noteworthy product in the year in review, the stocks went up 42%.

It deserves a discussion.

