>(2) Stock price: if you bought MSFT in October the year the iphone came out in 2007, you would take 6 years to break even. If you bought at the top in 2000 you wouldn't break even until 2016. This is a company that was limping along. During the mobile phone boom you'd have been better off putting your money in treasuries than in MSFT.

Using equity returns to claim a business is limping along is bizarre. They were earning $10B profit per year in the early 2000s with 20%+ profit margins, something most businesses can only dream of doing, even today.

https://www.helgilibrary.com/charts/microsoft-corporation-pr...

If that business is limping along, then pretty much all other businesses are on life support.