A review of the monthly rates of return for Google and Microsoft for two successive five year periods allow me to calculate the beta, ß, for each period. Recall that ß is calculated under the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) as follows:   Getting the data It was easy to download the data on yahoo finance. Once there, I was able to set the time period of interest and frequency as shown here (click to enlarge).   Once you have the set of data that interests you, scroll down to the bottom and download the data, as shown here.   Note that in order to calculate the ß in Excel, you need the market comparison data as well. In order to get that I change my search to ^DJI with the same period and frequency as shown above. However, I noticed that they don’t provide a download option for that data. Since the data is shown in tabular format, you can copy and paste it directly in to Excel. Don’t forget to click Next until you have grabbed all the necessary pages. Google data only went back to 2004, so the analysis for the second five year period for Google has fewer data points than the same analysis for Microsoft. Setup in Excel I setup a workbook with three sheets, one for MSFT, one for GOOG and the last for DJI, or market data. Since I wanted to get two success five year periods, I added an empty line at the five year mark. I hid all but the date, closing price and adjusted closing price on each sheet. Adjusted closing price In order to get the most accurate historical view of return rate, I used the adjusted closing price to calculate my monthly return. Formatting I then display the market data side by side with the stock specific return rate on each page. Excel conditional formatting made it easy to show movement graphically. That graphical view is a good sanity check while reviewing the formulas. Scatter plot Finally I inserted a scatter plot and used Excel’s built in linear mapping to show the ß line and calculate R-squared. Note that I also calculated ß using the SLOPE formula...

A review of the stock price and growth rate for Microsoft and Google over the past five years shows that they track very closely in general. However, the last year shows a marked deviation from this tracking as Microsoft stayed mainly flat and Google demonstrated strong growth. Using the data from the source above, we can project the anticipated stock price in 2018 if the growth rate remains constant over that time. Company Stock May 2008 Current Stock Effective Rate Stock May 2018 Google 580.07 909.18 56.74% 1425.05 Microsoft 29.99 34.87 16.27% 40.54 Here are the calculations used to arrive at the effective rates shown above (click to enlarge). Alternate approach In the example above, I calculate the effective rate based on the delta between May, 2008 and May, 2013. Another approach would be to start with the stock price five years ago and use Excel to find the annual rate (assuming annually compounding interest). In this case we get the following details. Company Annual Rate -5Y Today +5Y Google 9.40419% 580.07 909.18 1,425.02 Microsoft 3.0615% 29.99 34.87 40.55 The answers come out the more or less the same, but it helps to know what the annual interest rate is, not just the effective rate over the five year...