Microsoft Corporation $MSFT Shares Sold by U S Wealth Group LLC.

18 Mar 2026, 14:56 by Mitch Edgeman · The Markets Daily

U S Wealth Group LLC. lessened its stake in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 12.0% in the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 11,130 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 1,522 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for about 3.8% of U S Wealth Group LLC.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 10th largest position. U S Wealth Group LLC.’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $5,765,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Several other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of MSFT. Stonebridge Financial Planning Group LLC increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. Stonebridge Financial Planning Group LLC now owns 5,479 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $2,838,000 after purchasing an additional 99 shares in the last quarter. Opulen Financial Group LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 3.5% in the third quarter. Opulen Financial Group LLC now owns 1,901 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $985,000 after buying an additional 65 shares in the last quarter. Keystone Financial Group boosted its position in Microsoft by 10.9% in the third quarter. Keystone Financial Group now owns 54,832 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $28,339,000 after buying an additional 5,373 shares in the last quarter. Morningstar Investment Management LLC grew its stake in Microsoft by 25.5% during the third quarter. Morningstar Investment Management LLC now owns 163,143 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $84,500,000 after buying an additional 33,139 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft during the third quarter worth approximately $51,277,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

MSFT has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Oppenheimer reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, January 29th. Wolfe Research dropped their price target on Microsoft from $625.00 to $530.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, January 29th. Barclays reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, March 9th. UBS Group restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, January 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their price target on Microsoft from $575.00 to $550.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, January 29th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty have issued a Buy rating and four have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $591.95.

Read Our Latest Research Report on Microsoft

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, EVP Kathleen T. Hogan sold 12,321 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction on Friday, March 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $409.52, for a total transaction of $5,045,695.92. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 137,933 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $56,486,322.16. The trade was a 8.20% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director John W. Stanton acquired 5,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 18th. The stock was bought at an average price of $397.35 per share, with a total value of $1,986,750.00. Following the acquisition, the director directly owned 83,905 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $33,339,651.75. The trade was a 6.34% increase in their position. Additional details regarding this purchase are available in the official SEC disclosure. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Microsoft News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft reorganized and unified its Copilot commercial and consumer teams to speed product coherence and adoption; Mustafa Suleyman will focus more on model research while Jacob Andreou runs Copilot experiences — a move investors view as constructive for long-term AI product execution. Microsoft unifies Copilot teams
Positive Sentiment: Microsoft signed a letter-of-intent collaboration with Nscale to supply 1.35GW of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs at Nscale’s West Virginia AI campus — expands Microsoft’s access to large-scale AI compute capacity. Nscale and Microsoft collaboration
Positive Sentiment: Microsoft Research partnered with MediaTek on a MicroLED-powered active optical cable design that could improve data-center power efficiency — incremental infrastructure R&D that supports cloud and AI scale. MediaTek-Microsoft Research AOC
Neutral Sentiment: Third‑party feeds and analysts continue to debate Microsoft’s valuation after recent AI-driven gains and pullbacks — some see MSFT as attractively priced while others remain cautious; this keeps sentiment mixed. Valuation debate
Neutral Sentiment: Microsoft partners (e.g., Zenity) are rolling out security tooling for agents built on Microsoft Foundry — helps enterprise adoption but is incremental. Zenity Foundry security
Negative Sentiment: Financial Times/Reuters report Microsoft is weighing legal action against Amazon and OpenAI over a reported $50B deal tied to OpenAI’s Frontier product — this threatens Microsoft’s cloud exclusivity/competitive positioning and is the main catalyst for downward pressure on the stock today. FT/Reuters on Microsoft legal consideration
Negative Sentiment: Commentary suggests the Amazon–OpenAI tie-up could mark a serious breakdown in Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI — strategic uncertainty and potential litigation elevate regulatory, execution and client‑retention risks. Proactive on partnership breakdown
Negative Sentiment: Security noise: reports that an Intune tool may have been misused in attacks (Stryker mention) add operational/security scrutiny that can weigh on sentiment if escalated. TipRanks on Intune tool misuse

Microsoft Price Performance

Shares of MSFT stock opened at $399.41 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $2.97 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.98, a PEG ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 1.10. Microsoft Corporation has a 12 month low of $344.79 and a 12 month high of $555.45. The company has a quick ratio of 1.38, a current ratio of 1.39 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $424.42 and a 200 day moving average price of $474.29.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, January 28th. The software giant reported $4.14 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.86 by $0.28. The company had revenue of $81.27 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $80.28 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 39.04% and a return on equity of 32.34%. The company’s revenue was up 16.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.23 EPS. Research analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 13.08 EPS for the current year.

Microsoft Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, June 11th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, May 21st will be issued a dividend of $0.91 per share. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.9%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, May 21st. Microsoft’s payout ratio is currently 22.76%.

About Microsoft

(Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).