one good thing about msft is that it pays dividend. plus it's a monopoly. and is expanding into other businesses, like gaming and enterprise solutions. plus they have a lot of smart people working for them. linux is their biggest nightmare. there are two types of investors - chartists and fundamentalists. chartists look at the stock time series (history) and other metrics and predict future prices. fundamentalists look at teh economic/business fundamentals, like market size, potential for new growth, competition, current and historical cash flow, etc. to determine if the company's PE ratio is justifiable. msft is a good pick, imo. mainly cos its a monopoly and cos they a lot of smart ppl work there.