I must admit that I was truly shocked when I read last fall about Securities and Exchange Commission probes into mutual fund firms for accepting kickbacks from the companies hired to provide services to them. The individual shareholder is the one who pays these fees to the service companies and should be receiving all of the benefits, not the mutual fund managers!

It reminded me of when I first started on Wall Street. I worked at an investment banking firm that was considered to be in the "Bulge Bracket" category, reserved for only an elite few and not known for discounting its fees. A mentor of mine let me know that the firm's policy on fees and expenses was simply, "First class business done in a first class manner for a first class price."

However, this gentleman also taught me to remember that we were working for the client, not the other way around. He said that in fee negotiations, "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours." It is not "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is half mine with the other half up for negotiation."

As of 1:42 this afternoon, MSFT is down 11% - that's a whopping $31 billion in market capitalization in one day - to $24.24. One of the commenters to my post last night suggests that "we all just get out of all stocks and then "all stupid analysts can be fired and work in the fields with the Mexican farm workers, because that's what they deserve !!"

While that makes me laugh uproariously with my buddies at the coffee shop, I really don't blame the analysts here. It's not like Microsoft has really given them precise figures to consider. And, in my opinion (and I'd argue, the opinion of those analysts, themselves), MSFT management strategies are murky at best. The Goldman Sachs analyst in last night's earnings call said it best, "It sounds like you're building a Google or Yahoo! inside the company." They're spending a few billion dollars more than expected (and, more than last year) on "cost of sales" and they're telling us that all that money is being spent on increased Xbox 360 costs. I don't think so. And neither does Wall Street.

Chris Liddell isn't going to tell us what's really going on, and my guess is that Softie is building, deliberately and at great developer expense, proprietary software to do what all their competitors are doing. They've already spent a ton on their own ad serving platform - is that only the tip of the iceberg? The answer, I think, is yes. What do you think should be done about the 11% drop in market cap? And are you considering this a buying opportunity? Or are you run, running as fast as you can?