<story><title>Steve Ballmer&apos;s Microsoft</title><url>http://dcurt.is/steve-ballmers-microsoft</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dean</author><text>The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft&apos;s future as being less profitable than its past. That&apos;s why people belittle it.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It&apos;s funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the &quot;the trend here is clear&quot;. You can&apos;t determine a trend on one quarter, you have to compare to other quarters.&lt;p&gt;Here are some numbers from Google Finance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;The first number is Q1 (Mar &apos;12), the second is 2011&lt;p&gt;Net profit margin		29.34%	33.10%&lt;p&gt;Operating margin		36.62%	38.83%&lt;p&gt;Return on average assets	17.80%	23.77%&lt;p&gt;Return on average equity	30.86%	44.84%&lt;p&gt;Looks like the trend is down.&lt;p&gt;Also, their stock price has been basically flat for 10 years. That tells you what the market thinks of Microsoft.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Steko</author><text>People belittle Ballmer because:&lt;p&gt;(1) they were the big villain for a long time and there&apos;s still a lot of unspent schadenfreude with their name on it.&lt;p&gt;(2) they&apos;ve always been juxtaposed with Apple which is in meteoric rise like nothing we&apos;ve really ever seen.&lt;p&gt;(3) because monkey boy&lt;p&gt;Their stock price is flat only if you don&apos;t include the dividends they&apos;ve paid out.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve Ballmer&apos;s Microsoft</title><url>http://dcurt.is/steve-ballmers-microsoft</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dean</author><text>The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft&apos;s future as being less profitable than its past. That&apos;s why people belittle it.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It&apos;s funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the &quot;the trend here is clear&quot;. You can&apos;t determine a trend on one quarter, you have to compare to other quarters.&lt;p&gt;Here are some numbers from Google Finance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/finance?q=msft&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;The first number is Q1 (Mar &apos;12), the second is 2011&lt;p&gt;Net profit margin		29.34%	33.10%&lt;p&gt;Operating margin		36.62%	38.83%&lt;p&gt;Return on average assets	17.80%	23.77%&lt;p&gt;Return on average equity	30.86%	44.84%&lt;p&gt;Looks like the trend is down.&lt;p&gt;Also, their stock price has been basically flat for 10 years. That tells you what the market thinks of Microsoft.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kitsune_</author><text>The market does not think. It is neither efficient nor rational.&lt;p&gt;If the stock market is about the future, then how do you interpret Goldman Sachs&apos; share price of $235 in November 2007?&lt;p&gt;1 year later it fell to $53.&lt;p&gt;A company&apos;s share price will tell you nothing about the actual financial stability or future of the company.</text></comment>