If You Bought 100 Shares of MSFT 25 Years Ago
It's March 13, 1986: Microsoft, founded more than a decade earlier and already a powerhouse in the world of personal computer software, executes an initial public stock offering that will raise $61 million for the company and leave 30-year-old co-founder Bill Gates unfathomably wealthy.
If you had the good fortune to have bought 100 shares at the $21 offering price that day and sat on the investment for 25 years, it would have mushroomed into 28,800 shares over the course of nine stock splits and be worth about three quarters of a million dollars today (excluding dividends).
That's the good news. Here's the disheartening caveat: Had you instead sold your stash on Dec. 1, 1999, when Microsoft's stock price reached its peak, you would have reaped $1.4 million. You have to believe someone did … and tells that story every day
