Some shares have been held through every kind of market: a one-day crash, a bubble whose peak took over a decade to regain, and a cloud and AI boom that set new records. A holder who bought early has sat through all three, and none of the deep falls came with a date for the recovery.
That kind of record is easy to misread. Repeated stock splits can make an early offering price look like a few cents on today's charts, and the highest close and the highest intraday price can sit on different dates. Daily data tables add a third problem, because a list of closes gives no sign of what the rest of the market was doing.
Splitting the record into cycles turns it into a short list of falls and climbs, each with a depth, a length and the date the old record was beaten. Comparing each one with the Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500 over the same dates shows which falls belonged to the company and which to the whole market.
Microsoft (MSFT) is one such share: listed since 1986, it has run from the personal-computer boom to the cloud and AI years. On BloFin you can trade its share price with leverage, long or short, through the MSFTUSDT Perpetual, a contract that tracks the same Nasdaq-listed share.
What is Microsoft's stock price history?
Microsoft's stock price history runs from its $21 initial public offering on March 13, 1986 to a record close of $543.45 on October 13, 2026. Along the way the share went through nine drops of at least 25% below a record close, and the worst was a 74.6% slide from 1999 to 2009 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
Prices in this record are split-adjusted unless they are marked as traded prices or as the IPO price. That means each older price is divided by the stock splits that came after it, so a 1990s price and a 2026 price can be compared directly. Each fall is measured between a record close and the lowest close after it, and set beside the Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500 over the same dates (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history). The two indexes can tell a very different story from the share: over the dates of Microsoft's 2026 fall, the S&P 500 rose 6.8% (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history).
Fall | Record close to lowest close | Microsoft | Nasdaq-100 | S&P 500 | Back above the old record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1987 spring | May 8 to July 7, 1987 | −28.7% | −1.4% | +4.8% | September 28, 1987 |
1987 crash | October 5 to October 26, 1987 | −50.3% | −39.9% | −30.6% | October 5, 1989 |
1990 | July 16 to August 23, 1990 | −34.7% | −27.6% | −16.8% | January 16, 1991 |
1993 | June 1 to August 10, 1993 | −26.2% | −3.7% | −1.0% | May 13, 1994 |
1995 to 1996 | July 17, 1995 to January 9, 1996 | −26.4% | −10.5% | +8.3% | April 19, 1996 |
Dot-com bust and lost decade | December 27, 1999 to March 9, 2009 | −74.6% | −71.0% | −53.6% | October 21, 2016 |
2020 sell-off | February 10 to March 16, 2020 | −28.2% | −26.2% | −28.8% | June 9, 2020 |
2022 drawdown | November 19, 2021 to November 3, 2022 | −37.6% | −35.5% | −20.8% | June 15, 2023 |
2026 fall | October 28, 2025 to June 25, 2026 | −34.9% | +13.2% | +6.8% | October 13, 2026 |
The index columns show which falls were Microsoft's own. In 2020 the share and both indexes fell by almost the same amount, so the drop came from the market (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history). Every one of those falls ended in a new record close, and the Microsoft share that trades today is the same security that went through all nine.
When did Microsoft go public?
Microsoft went public on March 13, 1986, selling shares at $21 each on Nasdaq under the ticker MSFT (source: Microsoft investor FAQ). The offering raised $61 million, and co-founder Bill Gates kept a 45% stake after selling a small part of his holding (source: Microsoft Stories).
After nine stock splits, each share sold in the IPO is now 288 shares, so the $21 price works out to about 7 cents a share on today's split-adjusted charts (source: Microsoft investor FAQ). Each split cut the price without changing what a holder owned, as Microsoft's stock split record explains date by date.
Say you put $1,000 into the IPO at $21. That bought about 47.62 shares, which the splits have turned into about 13,714 shares, worth about $7.19 million at the October 23, 2026 close of $524.51, before dividends (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). With every dividend since 2003 reinvested, the same $1,000 comes to about $11.9 million. A $10,000 stake at the IPO price would be worth about $71.9 million on price alone.
Over the 40.6 years since the IPO, that works out to an average gain of 24.4% a year on price, or 26.0% a year with dividends reinvested. The S&P 500 rose 9.0% a year on price over the same dates, and the Nasdaq-100 13.9% a year (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history). Those averages smooth over nine deep falls, and each one decided how long a buyer at the top had to wait.
The 1987 crash and the 1990s climb
Microsoft's worst single day came nineteen months after its listing. On October 19, 1987, the day of the global stock market crash, the share closed 30.1% lower, worse than the S&P 500's 20.5% drop that day (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history). The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% in that one session (source: Federal Reserve History).
The crash did not end on Black Monday. A week later, on October 26, Microsoft fell another 18.7%, its second-worst day on record (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history), and over the three weeks from its October 5 record close the share lost 50.3%. It took two years, until October 5, 1989, to close above that record again.
The 1990s then brought three more falls of a quarter or more: 34.7% in the summer of 1990, 26.2% in 1993, and 26.4% from July 1995 to January 1996. Each was short, and each was beaten by a new record within a year. In 1993 the market barely moved, and from 1995 to 1996 the S&P 500 rose while the Nasdaq-100 lost about a tenth, so both were mostly Microsoft's own drops. The 1990 fall came during a wider sell-off.
What came between the falls was a twelve-year climb. From its October 26, 1987 low close to its December 27, 1999 record close, Microsoft rose about 218-fold, or 21,752.3%. Over the same dates the Nasdaq-100 rose 2,702.0% and the S&P 500 540.0% (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history). Microsoft's price rose by more than half in eight of the twelve calendar years from 1988 to 1999.
The dot-com peak and the lost decade
Microsoft's dot-com peak was a record close of $119.13 on December 27, 1999, which is $59.56 on today's split-adjusted charts. The share did not close above that level again until October 21, 2016, 16.8 years later. In between it fell 74.6% to a low close of $15.15 on March 9, 2009 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
The first leg of that slide came fast, and part of it was Microsoft's own. On April 3, 2000, the share fell 14.5% to a traded price of 90.87(45.44 split-adjusted) as settlement talks in its antitrust case with the US government collapsed. The judge's ruling in the case came after the close (source: Honolulu Star-Bulletin). Three weeks later, on April 24, it fell another 15.6%. Calendar 2000 cost the share 62.8%, against a 36.8% fall in the Nasdaq-100 (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history).
The second leg came during the 2008 financial crisis. From a high close of $37.06 on November 1, 2007, the share fell 59.1% to the March 2009 low, about as much as the S&P 500's 55.2% fall over the same dates (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history). From that bottom, getting back to the 1999 record needed a climb of 293.2%.
The climb back took a new strategy as well as time. Satya Nadella became chief executive officer (CEO) on February 4, 2014 (source: Microsoft News), and in October 2016 a solid quarterly report pushed the shares past their 1999 peak for the first time. Fortune tied the milestone to that report and to his aggressive move into cloud infrastructure services (source: Fortune). On October 21, 2016, the share rose 4.2% to close at $59.66, its first record close in almost seventeen years (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
Microsoft's 2020 and 2022 drawdowns
Microsoft's two falls of the early 2020s were similar in depth but recovered at very different speeds. The 2020 sell-off lasted just 35 days and was beaten within four months, while the 2022 drawdown ran for almost a year and took another seven months to undo (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
The 2020 fall was the market's (source: Yahoo Finance S&P 500 history): the S&P 500 fell 28.8% over the same dates, slightly more than Microsoft. On March 16, 2020, the share dropped 14.7% in one session, while the Nasdaq-100 fell 12.2%. It closed at a new record on June 9, 2020, just 85 days after the low, and kept climbing to a record close of $343.11 on November 19, 2021.
The 2022 drawdown ran from that record to a low close of $214.25 on November 3, 2022 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). The Nasdaq-100 fell 35.5% over the same dates, so most of the drop matched other large technology stocks. The share closed above $343.11 again on June 15, 2023, 224 days after the low.
Crypto holders will recognize the timing, though bitcoin's fall was deeper. Over the exact dates of Microsoft's 2022 drawdown, bitcoin's close fell 65.2%, and over the dates of the 2026 fall it dropped 47.1% (source: Yahoo Finance BTC-USD history). The correlation between Microsoft stock and bitcoin measures how closely the two move from day to day.
Microsoft's climb from the 2022 low to new records
From its 2022 low Microsoft climbed to a string of records in 2024 and 2025. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT (source: Microsoft blog). From that day's close to its record close of July 5, 2024, the share rose 92.7%.
The Nasdaq-100 rose 71.8% over the same months, so Microsoft ran well ahead of an index that was itself climbing fast (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history). The share then slipped 24.2% from that July 2024 record to an April 2025 low close of $354.56, just short of a 25% fall, before climbing again.
Each fall in the record was followed by a climb, and the climbs are the other half of the cycle:
Climb | Lowest close to record close | Microsoft | Nasdaq-100 | S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
IPO to the 1987 peak | March 13, 1986 (IPO price) to October 5, 1987 | +652.4% | +45.4% | +40.7% |
1987 low to the dot-com peak | October 26, 1987 to December 27, 1999 | +21,752.3% | +2,702.0% | +540.0% |
2009 low to the 2021 peak | March 9, 2009 to November 19, 2021 | +2,164.8% | +1,487.7% | +594.4% |
2022 low to the 2025 peak | November 3, 2022 to October 28, 2025 | +153.0% | +143.3% | +85.2% |
The intraday record came during the last of the 2025 climbs. On July 31, 2025, the day after a results report, Microsoft traded as high as $555.45 (source: Nasdaq MSFT historical data), and its market value passed $4 trillion for the first time (source: UPI). The cycle's record close, $542.07, came on October 28, 2025.
Microsoft's all-time high and the 2026 cycle
Microsoft's all-time high is an intraday price of $555.45, reached on July 31, 2025, and its highest close is $543.45 on October 13, 2026. That close beat the October 28, 2025 record by $1.38 and capped a climb of 54.0% from the 2026 low close of $352.83 on June 25 (source: Nasdaq MSFT historical data).
The 2026 fall took 240 days and came in two legs. The first ran from the record to late March. The share was already 11.1% below the record close when Microsoft reported its December quarter on January 28, 2026 (source: Microsoft second-quarter fiscal 2026 results), and fell 10.0% the next day. By March 27 it had closed at $356.77, 34.2% below the record (source: Nasdaq MSFT historical data). A rebound to a $460.52 close on June 1 then gave way to a second slide of 23.4%, ending at the June 25 low.
What makes this fall stand out in the record is the market around it. Over the same 240 days the Nasdaq-100 rose 13.2%, which makes it the only deep fall in Microsoft's record during which the Nasdaq-100 went up (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history). The turn came on July 30, 2026, the day after a report showing Azure cloud revenue up 43% (source: Microsoft fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results). The share rose 15.5% that day, its biggest gain since October 2008, adding about $450 billion of market value, a one-day record for any stock (source: Bloomberg via BGOV).
The July to September quarter ended 37.5% higher, Microsoft's biggest calendar-quarter gain since early 1998 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). On October 13 the share also reached $551.15 during the session, 0.8% short of the intraday record, so the two records now sit on different dates. By the October 23 close of $524.51, it stood 3.5% below its record close and 5.6% below the intraday high. Microsoft scheduled its next report, for July to September (Q1 of fiscal 2027), for Wednesday, October 28, 2026, after the market close. The Q1 FY2027 earnings preview sets out what that report will be measured against.
The MSFTUSDT Perpetual started trading on BloFin on April 20, 2026, at 2PM UTC, so the contract's whole history sits inside this cycle. Its lowest traded price was 349.65 USDT on June 25, and its highest 551.78 USDT on October 13, the days of the share's own 2026 low and record close. From that low to that high the perpetual and the Nasdaq-listed share both rose 57.8%. The perpetual follows the share through a price index built from market data vendors, and its contract terms set the leverage, funding and fees on top.
The perpetual keeps quoting on weekends, when Nasdaq is closed and trading may be limited to reduce-only orders (source: BloFin stock futures notice), and its daily ranges on those days stay narrow until the share trades again. That matters for any price record on its chart, and overnight and weekend gap risk explains what can happen when the share reopens far from Friday's close. You can follow the contract's own record as it adds to this cycle on the MSFTUSDT Perpetual page.
Microsoft stock returns by year
Microsoft stock has risen in 29 of the 39 full calendar years since 1987, and it gained 50% or more in fourteen of them. Its best full year was 1987, at 124.9%, and its worst was 2000, at minus 62.8% (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
Year | Microsoft | Nasdaq-100 | S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|---|
1986 (from the IPO) | +129.8% | −3.8% | +3.9% |
1987 | +124.9% | +10.5% | +2.0% |
1988 | −1.8% | +13.5% | +12.4% |
1989 | +63.4% | +26.2% | +27.3% |
1990 | +73.0% | −10.4% | −6.6% |
1991 | +121.8% | +65.0% | +26.3% |
1992 | +15.1% | +8.9% | +4.5% |
1993 | −5.6% | +10.6% | +7.1% |
1994 | +51.6% | +1.5% | −1.5% |
1995 | +43.6% | +42.5% | +34.1% |
1996 | +88.3% | +42.5% | +20.3% |
1997 | +56.4% | +20.6% | +31.0% |
1998 | +114.6% | +85.3% | +26.7% |
1999 | +68.4% | +102.0% | +19.5% |
2000 | −62.8% | −36.8% | −10.1% |
2001 | +52.7% | −32.7% | −13.0% |
2002 | −22.0% | −37.6% | −23.4% |
2003 | +5.9% | +49.1% | +26.4% |
2004 | −2.4% | +10.4% | +9.0% |
2005 | −2.1% | +1.5% | +3.0% |
2006 | +14.2% | +6.8% | +13.6% |
2007 | +19.2% | +18.7% | +3.5% |
2008 | −45.4% | −41.9% | −38.5% |
2009 | +56.8% | +53.5% | +23.5% |
2010 | −8.4% | +19.2% | +12.8% |
2011 | −7.0% | +2.7% | 0.0% |
2012 | +2.9% | +16.8% | +13.4% |
2013 | +40.1% | +35.0% | +29.6% |
2014 | +24.2% | +17.9% | +11.4% |
2015 | +19.4% | +8.4% | −0.7% |
2016 | +12.0% | +5.9% | +9.5% |
2017 | +37.7% | +31.5% | +19.4% |
2018 | +18.7% | −1.0% | −6.2% |
2019 | +55.3% | +38.0% | +28.9% |
2020 | +41.0% | +47.6% | +16.3% |
2021 | +51.2% | +26.6% | +26.9% |
2022 | −28.7% | −33.0% | −19.4% |
2023 | +56.8% | +53.8% | +24.2% |
2024 | +12.1% | +24.9% | +23.3% |
2025 | +14.7% | +20.2% | +16.4% |
2026 (to October 23) | +8.5% | +14.7% | +11.4% |
The years from 2003 to 2012 explain the lost decade better than any single fall. Microsoft trailed the Nasdaq-100 in seven of those ten years, and its price ended 2012 just 3.3% above where it started 2003 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
Shorter holding periods look different again, and dividends make more difference the longer you hold. These worked examples start from the closes of October 24, 2016 and October 23, 2006, and end at the October 23, 2026 close.
Invested | Bought on | Value on price alone | Value with dividends reinvested |
|---|---|---|---|
$1,000 | October 24, 2016 | $8,598.52 | $9,683 |
$10,000 | October 24, 2016 | $85,985.25 | $96,834 |
$1,000 | October 23, 2006 | $18,436.20 | $26,318 |
$10,000 | October 23, 2006 | $184,362.04 | $263,180 |
Over the ten years the price rose 759.9%, against 489.8% for the Nasdaq-100 and 254.4% for the S&P 500 (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history). Over twenty years the dividends added more than $7,800 to every $1,000, because each payment bought more shares that then rose with the price. A perpetual carries no right to dividends (source: BloFin stock futures notice). Holding one for years carries the funding cost of holding the perpetual instead, and that is the trade-off to weigh before using it as a long-term position.
How to read Microsoft's long-term chart
To read Microsoft's long-term chart, compare moves in percentages, pick the right adjusted price, and keep the Nasdaq-100 on the same screen. A $50 drop meant 83.9% of the split-adjusted 1999 record of $59.56, but only 9.2% of the October 2025 record close of $542.07.
To size a fall, divide the drop by the record close; to size the gain needed to regain the record, divide the record close by the low and subtract one.
Fall | How far it fell | Gain needed to regain the record |
|---|---|---|
1987 crash | 50.3% | 101.3% |
1999 to 2009 | 74.6% | 293.2% |
2022 drawdown | 37.6% | 60.1% |
2026 fall | 34.9% | 53.6% |
That arithmetic is why the 1987 and 1999 falls took years to undo, while most of the others took months. A log scale draws equal percentage moves at equal heights, so it shows the 1987 crash as large as it was. An ordinary scale shrinks every move before 2000 into a flat line along the bottom.
Price history sites usually show two closing columns. The split-adjusted close is the traded price divided for later splits, while the adjusted close also takes out the dividends paid since, so it runs lower for older dates. For December 27, 1999, the split-adjusted close is $59.56 and the dividend-adjusted close $36.15, a gap built by every payment since 2003 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). Use the adjusted close for total-return comparisons and the split-adjusted close for price levels.
Many traders also watch the 200-day moving average, the average of the last 200 daily closes, as a simple test of the long-term trend. Microsoft closed below it in 141 of the 204 sessions of 2026 to October 23, and last crossed back above it on July 30. On October 23 the average stood at $436.51, with the share 20.2% above it (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
Microsoft's stock volatility puts numbers on the daily and weekly swings behind every cycle in the record.
Set the same record beside a single rival and it reads differently again, because each rival went through its own cycles. Nvidia is the chip supplier behind much of Microsoft's AI build, and Apple is its oldest rival in personal computers.
Amazon and Alphabet run Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, the two cloud platforms that compete with Azure.
Meta's record shows how much deeper a big technology fall can run. Its share lost 64.2% in calendar 2022, more than twice Microsoft's fall that year (source: Yahoo Finance META history), and Meta and Microsoft stock sets the two records side by side.
Looking to trade Microsoft's next cycle? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the MSFTUSDT Perpetual trading page.
Frequently asked questions
What was Microsoft stock's best day ever?
Microsoft's biggest one-day gain came on October 19, 2000, when the share rose 19.6%, closing at a traded price of $61.88 after 51.75thesessionbefore(30.94 and $25.88 split-adjusted). The next biggest was October 13, 2008, up 18.6% as the S&P 500 jumped 11.6% in the financial crisis (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
How many down years has Microsoft stock had?
Microsoft has finished ten of its 39 full calendar years since 1987 lower on price: 1988, 1993, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2022. Six of those came in the eleven years from 2000 to 2010, and only one, 2022, has come since Satya Nadella became CEO (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history).
How much was Microsoft stock 5 years ago?
Microsoft stock closed at $309.16 on October 22, 2021 (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). Its October 23, 2026 close of $524.51 is a price gain of 69.7% over those five years, or 76.8% with dividends reinvested. That five-year window holds the whole 2022 drawdown and the whole 2026 fall and recovery.
When did Microsoft start paying a dividend?
Microsoft paid its first dividend in 2003, an annual $0.08 a share, seventeen years after the IPO (source: Microsoft investor FAQ). Yahoo Finance's record lists 91 entries from February 2003 to August 2026, worth $36.55 a share in all (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). The largest, $3.08 a share listed under November 15, 2004, the ex-dividend date, combines a one-time $3.00 special dividend with the regular $0.08 quarterly dividend, both paid on December 2, 2004 (source: Microsoft dividend history).
How much has Microsoft stock risen since Satya Nadella became CEO?
Microsoft closed at $36.35 on February 4, 2014, the day Satya Nadella was named CEO. Its October 23, 2026 close of $524.51 is about 14.4 times that, a price gain of 1,342.9%, while the Nasdaq-100 rose 734.5% and the S&P 500 334.3% over the same dates (source: Yahoo Finance Nasdaq-100 history).
Is Microsoft stock a buy right now?
Microsoft's record shows both sides of that question. Every fall of a quarter or more has ended in a new record close, including the 34.9% fall of 2025 and 2026, yet the 1999 peak took 16.8 years to regain (source: Yahoo Finance MSFT history). Whether it suits you depends on how long you plan to hold and how you weigh Azure's growth against the cost of Microsoft's AI build-out. The bull and bear cases for Microsoft stock set out each side in full.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Microsoft's investor FAQ, its dividend history, its Stories archive, its news release on Satya Nadella's appointment and its results releases for the second and fourth quarters of fiscal 2026. Price data comes from Yahoo Finance and Nasdaq daily history for Microsoft, the Nasdaq-100, the S&P 500, bitcoin and Meta, with Federal Reserve History, the Microsoft blog, reporting from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Fortune, UPI and Bloomberg, and BloFin's stock futures notice and its own MSFTUSDT Perpetual price data, current as of October 26, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Microsoft in any form. Microsoft's share price has fallen by a quarter or more nine times since 1986. After the 1999 peak it took 16.8 years to regain its record, so a long run of gains says nothing about how long the next fall could last. A leveraged MSFTUSDT Perpetual position can be liquidated in a single day of the size the share has seen, such as the 10.0% fall of January 29, 2026. It also carries no dividend right, while funding payments run against or for it. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.