Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares jumped nearly 7% on Wednesday, Nov. 4, as U.S. stocks rallied the day after Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm elections.
The stock sits near $553 as of this writing. That leaves it about 57% over its June 25 close of $352.83, and the rise took just 92 trading days.
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A move like that is rare for a company worth about $4 trillion. But Microsoft has done it before. Going back through its daily closing prices to 1986, I find 13 past runs like this one. In 11 of them, the stock was up a year later, with a median one-year gain of around 33%.
It’s a solid record. But it might mean less than it seems. Microsoft stock has climbed in around 74% of all one-year periods since 1986, fast run or not. And the latest run, in July 2025, is one of the two that finished down.
Image source: Getty Images.
Most of the big years came early
Every run starts the first day Microsoft closed at least 50% over its lowest close in the past 92 trading days. I used split-adjusted prices without dividends, and runs had to begin at least one year apart. “A year later” is the close 12 months after a run started (or the last trading day before it). By this rule, the current run began on Oct. 6.
Ten of the 13 past runs came between 1986 and 2001, when Microsoft was a much smaller company. The biggest years came in that stretch, too. Shares more than doubled over the year after the runs that began in November 1986, January 1991, and March 1998.
The one early miss followed a January 1988 run, when the stock was recovering from the October 1987 crash, and shares were around 12% down a year later.
Since the 2001 run, Microsoft has only moved this fast three times. The stock gained around 12% over the year after June 2009 and about 33% after June 2020. Then it lost about 13% after July 2025.
Even some of the good years were rough. After the January 1992 and January 2001 runs, shares slid over 20% at one point before ending the year higher.
The July 2025 run started at a steep price
Microsoft’s latest fast run hit the 50% mark the day after its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter report on July 30, 2025. The July 31 close of $533.50 was around 50% over the April 8 low. Investors paid about 38 times earnings then, using the $14.13 a share Microsoft earned in fiscal 2025 on a non-GAAP (adjusted) basis.
