Last month I wrote about a buddy of mine who had invested in Microsoft stock many years ago. He'd seen the stock rise nicely and had several times his original investment locked up in his holdings. His problem, if you can find a way to sympathize with him, has been that Microsoft stock has basically done nothing for quite a long time.

I didn't give him any advice on his problem, other than to talk about opportunity cost. That is to say, your money that's sitting idle in Microsoft today earning little or nothing could be invested in some other stock with more upward momentum. The difference between the value of his Microsoft holdings some arbitrary time from now and some other investment at that time is the opportunity cost of not making the more attractive investment.

I'll have to give him a call to see what, if anything he did as a result of our conversation. It looks like Microsoft has found the keys to it's growth engine again. They reported a 23% rise in net income yesterday after the market closed. Revenue grew more last quarter than in any quarter in the previous 8 years. Microsoft stock immediately shot up about 12% in after hours trading, adding about $30 billion of shareholder value. Microsoft's excellent report is being pointed to as the principal reason stock futures are up this morning.

I hope my friend didn't sell.