If You Invested $1,000 in Microsoft 10 Years Ago
If you invested $1,000 in Microsoft at the close on 12 October 2016, it was worth $9,476 at the close on 12 October 2026 on price alone, or $10,671 with dividends reinvested by Yahoo Finance's adjusted close. The same $1,000 in SPY, an S&P 500 fund, reached $3,641.
What your money in Microsoft became
Type any amount. The results are built from Microsoft's real closes up to 12 October 2026.
Price-only lines are the 12 October 2026 close over the start-date close, from Yahoo Finance and matched by Nasdaq.com. The dividends-reinvested line is Yahoo’s adjusted close alone; no second source covers it. Nothing here moves with today’s price, and fees, taxes and inflation are left in.
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If you invested $1,000 in Microsoft at the close on 12 October 2016, it was worth $9,476 at the close on 12 October 2026 on price alone.
With every dividend put back into more shares it was $10,671, by Yahoo Finance’s adjusted close. What stands out is less the total than the shape: Microsoft beat a fund tracking the S&P 500 (SPY) in most single years and lost money in only one.
| Put in $1,000 on | Microsoft, price only | Microsoft, dividends reinvested (Yahoo only) | SPY, price only |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Oct 2025 (1 year) | $1,053 | $1,061 | $1,174 |
| 12 Oct 2021 (5 years) | $1,848 | $1,925 | $1,794 |
| 12 Oct 2016 (10 years) | $9,476 | $10,671 | $3,641 |
What it computes
Each answer is a ratio of two closing prices. Microsoft closed at $541.15 on 12 October 2026 and at $57.11 on 12 October 2016. That ratio is 9.48, so $1,000 became $9,476.
The reinvested line uses Yahoo’s adjusted close, which treats each dividend as buying more shares on its payment day. Its ratio is 10.67. We have no second source for that series, so every reinvested number on this page is Yahoo only.
When a start date falls on a weekend, the next trading day is used. So the one-year line starts on 13 October 2025, since 12 October 2025 was a Sunday.
The short window is the weak one. Over the latest year Microsoft returned 5.3% while SPY returned 17.4%. Over five years they were close, and over ten Microsoft was far ahead.
Microsoft against SPY, one year at a time
We split the decade into ten October-to-October years and measured both on price alone. Each year starts and ends on the last close on or before 12 October.
| Year ending | Microsoft | SPY | Ahead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2017 | +35.0% | +19.2% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2018 | +42.1% | +8.4% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2019 | +27.5% | +7.4% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2020 | +58.5% | +19.0% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2021 | +32.3% | +23.0% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2022 | -22.9% | -17.8% | SPY |
| Oct 2023 | +46.7% | +21.6% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2024 | +25.7% | +33.6% | SPY |
| Oct 2025 | +22.7% | +12.7% | Microsoft |
| Oct 2026 | +5.9% | +19.2% | SPY |
Microsoft was ahead in 7 of the 10 years. The one losing year was the same for both, October 2021 to October 2022. It trailed in two of the last three years, 2024 and 2026, which is why the one-year line above looks weak.
It was also the calmest of the seven big stocks on these pages. The yearly spread of its daily price changes, a common way to state volatility, came to about 28% over the decade, the lowest of the group (Apple was about 29%, Tesla about 59%). SPY was about 18%. Nasdaq.com’s closes give the same figures.
A worked example from the 2021 peak year
Say you put $4,000 into Microsoft at the close on 12 October 2021. The close that day was $292.88.
Thirteen months later you were down by more than a quarter. On 3 November 2022 the close was $214.25, so your $4,000 was worth about $2,926.
By 12 October 2026 the close was $541.15. Divide: $541.15 ÷ $292.88 = 1.85. Your $4,000 became about $7,391, on price alone. The calculator’s 5-year line gives the same multiple for any amount.
Dividends: what 40 payments added
Microsoft paid 40 dividends in the ten years, by Yahoo’s dividend record (single source). The quarterly payment rose from $0.39 a share in November 2016 to $0.91 in August 2026, a total of $24.52 a share.
Taken as cash, they paid about $429. $1,000 bought about 17.51 shares in 2016, and 17.51 × $24.52 is about $429.
Reinvested, they added about $1,196. That is the gap between $9,476 and $10,671, or about 12.6% on top of the price gain. The extra beyond the $429 of cash is what the reinvested shares earned in their own right.
SPY’s dividends added more in percentage terms. Its reinvested line was $4,263 against $3,641 on price, about 17.1% extra. But Microsoft’s price gain was so much larger that its dividends added far more in dollars.
The 2026 fall that almost nobody would see in the total
Microsoft closed at a high of $542.07 on 28 October 2025. The 2016 stake was then worth $9,492.
By 25 June 2026 it had fallen 34.9%, to $352.83, and the stake to about $6,178. On 12 October 2026 the close of $541.15 was 0.17% below the old high, 349 days later.
The deepest fall of the decade came earlier. From 19 November 2021 to 3 November 2022 Microsoft fell 37.6%, taking the 2016 stake from $6,008 to $3,752. It closed above that high again on 15 June 2023, 573 days later. A 37.6% fall needs about a 60% gain to undo.
The original data, year by year
The figures come from 2,513 daily closes of Microsoft and SPY, 12 October 2016 to 12 October 2026, downloaded from Yahoo Finance on 13 October 2026. Nasdaq.com’s Microsoft closes for those days match Yahoo’s to within 0.004%, and every yearly percentage in the table agrees to the first decimal.
The yearly table with both sources side by side is published as the Microsoft and SPY yearly data file.
The chart puts the ten years next to each other. Blue bars are Microsoft and gray bars are SPY, each pair one October-to-October year.
The tallest bar is the year to October 2020, when Microsoft rose 58.5% and SPY 19.0%. The only pair below zero is 2022.
When it fails: snapshots hide the dips
Yearly snapshots hide what happens inside the year. The 2026 row shows +5.9%, yet inside that year the stock fell 34.9%. Picking 12 October as the measuring day is a choice, and another day would change the table.
A ten-year winner is chosen with hindsight. Microsoft is here because it is one of the largest companies today. That is survivorship bias: the big companies of 2016 that shrank are not on any list like this one.
The reinvested line assumes no tax. In an ordinary account dividends are taxed when paid, so less is left to put back in.
Inflation is not removed. The inflation-adjusted return calculator can show what $9,476 in 2026 is worth in 2016 dollars.
The past is not a forecast. None of this says what Microsoft does next or whether to buy it.
Related pages on dividends and drawdowns
The dividend income calculator works out the cash a yield like this one pays. The dividend page explains how payments and payment dates work.
The drawdown page explains the measure behind the 37.6% and 34.9% falls.
Steady does not mean safe. Even the calmest stock in this group fell by more than a third twice in five years. Pick an amount you could leave alone through a fall like that.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money. Some links on this page earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what appears here or in what order — how these pages are made is set out in our methodology.