Microsoft started the new year with a small gain year to date, then lost it in recent days. This story will assess fundamental, technical and institutional sponsorship criteria on the veteran tech giant and long-term leader of the stock market. Following the three-day MLK national holiday, the leader in cloud computing, enterprise software, gaming consoles and computing hardware underperformed a broad and bullish stock market advance, edging 0.1% lower to 428.50 in above-average turnover.