Microsoft’s successes during Nadella’s tenure are undeniably impressive. Under his leadership, the company’s business became heavily cloud-focused — and the evolution of its Azure cloud infrastructure service helped transform the business and position it to capitalize on artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) trends. Growth for other subscription-based products also helped boost sales and earnings. <\/p>\n On the other hand, it’s probably not reasonable to expect the stock to replicate that incredible run over the next 12 years. When Nadella took over, the company had a market capitalization<\/a> of roughly $300 billion — and its share price had been depressed by stagnant business performance, failed growth bets, and rising competitive pressures from rivals including Alphabet and Apple. <\/p>\n Today, Microsoft has a market cap of roughly $3.69 trillion and ranks as the world’s fourth-largest company. While it’s not impossible that the stock could continue to deliver nearly 30% average annual returns over a significant period of time, typically, the larger a company gets, the more difficult it becomes for it to deliver rapid growth. <\/p>\n Nadella took over at a time when Microsoft was struggling and its stock had fallen out of favor with investors. The turnaround that he helped to engineer and execute reinvigorated the business’s growth engines, addressed competitive weaknesses, and positioned the company to drive and benefit from emerging tech trends. However, the incredible average annualized stock gains under his leadership are at least partially a result of the company having been in a relatively weak position when he became CEO. <\/p>\n Microsoft is looking much stronger today. Windows and Office continue to be solid performance drivers, the cloud business is growing at an impressive clip, and the company has a multitude of ways to profit from the AI trend. With those dynamics in mind, there’s a good chance that the stock can continue to be a market-beating investment — but expecting it to keep delivering annualized returns of nearly 30% in perpetuity isn’t reasonable. <\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Microsoft right now? <\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Microsoft, consider this: <\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the\u00a010 best stocks<\/a> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Microsoft wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. <\/p>\n Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation,\u00a0you’d have $445,833!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,402,153!* <\/p>\n Now, it’s worth noting\u00a0Stock Advisor’s total average return is 993% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 214% for the S&P 500.\u00a0Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with\u00a0Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. <\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/a> <\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of September 4, 2026. <\/p>\n Keith Noonan<\/a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/a> Image source: Getty Images. Microsoft is a great company, but investors should manage their expectations <\/p>\n