Bill Gates is super rich but his once high-flying software company is in doldrums since mid-2002 after the fall of the level of $ 35. The problem with Microsoft (MSFT) has been its inability to grow both in terms of revenues and profits superlative rates the company once enjoyed.

All companies of the size of Microsoft, with a market capitalization of $ 242 billion, growth will be a problem because of its size. But this does not mean the stock is dead. Far from it, Microsoft remains a viable long-term, software companies and is cash rich with $ 34 billion, or $ 3.28 per share in cash. This gives the stock plenty of financial flexibility to acquire or develop technologies for growth. Microsoft has just announced that it spent $ 1.1 billion in R & D units in the MSN Internet FY07. And according to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is exploring the possibility of taking a stake in Internet media company Yahoo (YHOO) to take on Internet advertising Behemoth Google (GOOG).

Blockbuster (BBI) is a perfect example of what can go wrong when you misunderstood industry trends and then realizing it, trying desperately to catch up. In the period from 2001 to late 2002, Blockbuster is the leader in video rental. Its shares were trading at about $ 30 a share and its market cap was about $ 5.75 billion.

But there was a trend towards the development of rental movies via the Internet. Blockbuster has failed to recognize the growing importance of Internet video rental, a bad miscalculation on his part. The shares have fallen steadily over the current $ 3.80 to $ 4.20 channel. Once a big hat, Blockbuster is now a small-cap and is struggling to regain a sense of direction. The company entered into the Internet DVD rental, but has a lot of recovering to do.

Basically, Blockbuster has lost money over the last three straight quarters and struggling to grow its revenues, which are expected to increase just 1.1% in the 2006 budget. His five-year estimated earnings growth rate is a mere 2.5% per year, which is pitiful.

There is plenty of money in the stock market. However, not everyone can get the money from there. Some people may get a lot from the stock market but has lost about a lot of money there. It ‘very indecisive. Sometimes, then, is the loss of money, but after a few days, you can earn a profit and sometimes reversed. So, how should we do to get the money from the bag? Usually, there are two ways to obtain money from the bag, which are investing and trading. The difference between trade and investment is trading involves buying and selling of shares or future option, within a short period of time, and investing is buying shares or future option and hold it for a period rather long, usually one or more years before selling it.

What is the difference between the parties, the future and option? What we do know is that it is much cheaper than the share and future, it is usually ten times lower than the price. So if you have a sum of money that enough for you to buy 100 shares, you can use this sum of money to buy the 1000 option. And the return on investment is almost the same option, and between the parties. Therefore, they earn about ten times if you buy the option, rather than share or future. However, the disadvantage is that if you lose on the trade that you lose as much as tenfold. When the option trade, the amount of money you can make a profit and losing is almost as if you were trading shares. However, we need a lot of money to buy shares than to buy the option. This means that the percentage of profit and loss account for the purchase of an option is much more than parties. The example is like when you buy $ 10 for a unity of action and $ 1 for one unit of option. When the price drops to $ 0.10, the percentage reduction for the purchase of shares is 1%, but the option to purchase, the percentage of loss is 10%. That ’s why the percentage of profit and loss account for the purchase of options is huge compared to buy shares even if the price fluctuates in a small amount.