Get Ready to Profit from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Stock's Encore

Michael A. Robinson

We've talked a lot about the importance of targeting growth stocks as a great way to become financially independent.

In fact, growth is one of the five rules that my tech-wealth-building strategy uses to identify the best profit opportunities.

But you can't ignore "value" stocks – especially since "special situation" plays such as corporate turnarounds can generate windfall gains for your portfolio.

And today I want to reintroduce you to a slumbering tech giant that is the embodiment of a special-situation value play.

For years, this company was the quintessential growth play, a virtual monopoly whose name was synonymous with sector dominance and investment wealth.

But when its growth phase finally ended, this stock fell off the investment radar.

And it's been locked in investment purgatory ever since. Mainstream investors ignore it altogether – or make jokes about the company's eroding core business, famously nerdy cofounder, and the payback it seems to be receiving for its once-bruising business practices.

But not us. We see the huge profit potential ahead…

Ready for a Comeback

I'm talking, of course, about Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) – the stock market kingmaker of the 1990s.

With its Windows operating system installed on virtually all of the world's PCs – its market share peaked at about 95% – Microsoft was the personal computer revolution.

Microsoft teamed with chip giant Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) to create the "Wintel" standard, and the duo's bare-knuckled business practices made the PC market uninhabitable for any other chip-and-software standard.

Microsoft's dominance didn't stop with operating systems, either. With its Office suite of productivity software, the Redmond, Wash.-based company did nearly the same thing in the applications market.

The result: MSFT stock went on a 9,000% ride during the 1990s.

Even the antitrust watchdogs in the United States and Europe failed to derail the Microsoft Express.

Microsoft continues to dominate the PC market. But the PC market is not the dominant force it once was.

With the "dot-bomb" implosion of 2000, the PC market began to slow. From 2001 to 2011, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 34%, Microsoft shares plunged 25%.

The company was caught downright flat-footed as folks began trading their PCs for smartphones and tablets.

And most investors have written the company off – or forgotten about it altogether.

Here's why those investors are making a big mistake…

Michael A. Robinson

About the Author

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Michael A. Robinson is one of the top financial analysts working today. His book "Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings" was a prescient look at the anatomy of the nation's S&L crisis, long before the word "bailout" became part of our daily lexicon. He's a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and reporter, lauded by the Columbia Journalism Review for his aggressive style. His 30-year track record as a leading tech analyst has garnered him rave reviews, too. Today he is the editor of the monthly tech investing newsletter Nova-X Report as well as Radical Technology Profits, where he covers truly radical technologies – ones that have the power to sweep across the globe and change the very fabric of our lives – and profit opportunities they give rise to. He also explores "what's next" in the tech investing world at Strategic Tech Investor.

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