Microsoft Gaining Favor as a Value Stock

More proof that if you live (or engage in investing) long enough you see just about everything. Microsoft has been gaining favor as a value play from my routine reading -- and in four instances just since since 2009 got underway.

First was Fred Hickey recommending in this year's Barron's Roundtable.

Second was learning that several of Peter Cundill's funds have established positions in Microsoft. Including his flagship Value Fund, which invests globally.

Third was seeing value blogger Geoff Gannon declare "Microsoft is Cheap" and recommend buying it at $17.50 or less, if someone is looking for a big cap stock.

And the fourth instance is this Bloomberg story. In it, Bill Fleckenstein reports CLOSING his 13-year-old Bear market fund and buying Microsoft:

“It’d be easier for me to find five stocks I think are going to go up than five stocks I think are going to go down,” said Fleckenstein, who is based in Seattle. “Being short right now just feels like the wrong strategy.”

He says he bought Microsoft last month at 9 times earnings. It sold at the height of the tech bubble in March 2000 at more than 69 times earnings.

Fleckenstein has always struck me as an interesting guy, though from seeing him on TV through the years I almost wrote him off as a perma-bear.