My friend who works at MSFT just said the same thing to me. He was pretty crushed after spending a lot of time house hunting.

I think graphs which don't show the zero on the y axis should be made illegal :)

Of course now's a good time to request more towels ;)

The nose dive is right around the same time I was hired. Didn't know I had that sort of affect on Wall Street... ;)

The 3-month on MXIM tells a similar story... Luckily I cashed out a lot of my options when we hit 56 in early 2004. Seemed silly and shortsighted at the time, but I guess I was lucky... As a rational engineer, it's hard for us to understand the effect that fear has on these numbers.

Uhh, the professional adviser would have said "diversify". If you diversified to a NASDAQ index fund, your results would look like this:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.asp?Symbol=$COMPX&ShowChtBt=Refresh+Chart&DateRangeForm=1&CP=0&PT=3&C5=6&C6=2006&C7=6&C8=2006&C9=0&ComparisonsForm=1&CE=0&DisplayForm=1&D4=1&D5=0&D3=0&ViewType=0&PeriodType=2

Or maybe the adviser would have said to balance your MS investments by investing in the Anti-Microsoft, the perpetually hip Apple?
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.asp?Symbol=AAPL&ShowChtBt=Refresh+Chart&DateRangeForm=1&CP=0&PT=3&C5=6&C6=2006&C7=6&C8=2006&C9=0&ComparisonsForm=1&CE=0&DisplayForm=1&D4=1&D5=0&D3=0&ViewType=0&PeriodType=2

A falling tide lowers all boats.

Looks like it's time to buy MSFT.

See my post http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2006/06/microsoft_stock.html

Yes, Apple has been a very good investment :-)

Don't worry Niall, it's down even for those of us who joined in 1999.

If you are a Microsoft employee & counted on Microsoft stock for your house payment then yes, you are a fool & should have talked to a financial advisor. There is nothing "wrong" with holding stock in your employer but it looks like you didn't understand how that affects the risk level of your portfolio. Investing in your employer increases your risk of catastrophic financial event. Any such money invested should be viewed as disposable fun-money. Counting on it for anything is not wise. You just got a very expensive lesson in risk calculation. I hope you remember it the next time an employer offers you options or an employee stock purchase plan.

Hey Dare,

Bummer. Come on down and join us in SVC - then you'll never have to worry about buying a house again. :)

It is still way to high. I mean for a company that breaks every kind of competetion rules. Add to that they deliver no security at all (60% of all computers whith windows had some kind of worm). They deliver no innvoations at all. So if you are a stockholder...sell sell sell sell. Now before the next drop comes. And belive me it will.