MSFT is off its peak from the beginning of the year; if you sold at 315.95, that's more like $2.3 million.

Always the benefit of hindsight.

I make it 5x 2-4-1 splits since 1993, so 100 shares then would be worth 3200 shares today, and I think were about $80 each at the time.

700 hours of average paid work ($11/hr) back in 1993 would have bought you 100 Microsoft Shares, which today would be worth $750k, or $1,000 an hour.

On the other hand you could have bought 700 hours worth of Blockbuster shares.

According to the calculator above, it turns into 7200 shares today, but otherwise, yes, you are right.

Splits don't change the value of the stock. If there's a 2:1 split, the market cap stays the same so the share price halves. It's just a way lower the price of individual shares.

Why do it at all then? I've always wondered.

It used to be difficult to transact in orders of less than 100 shares. There's still a bias against 'odd lots', at exchanges, but market makers love small orders because they tend to be retail orders and it's better to trade with retail than institutions generally.

Trading under $10 is discouraged by the exchanges. Trading above $100 is discouraged because 100x $100 is $10,000, which is a lot of money. Targetting about $25 was the norm.

Single lot sales and now fractional sales makes a lot of that less necessary, and so more companies have avoided doing it.

But there used to be 'low priced stock funds' which would buy stocks around $10 and sell them around $25 and do pretty well.

Before fractional shares were a thing, it made the stock more attainable for "regular" investors. It can also change up your ranking in indices like the Dow Jones that are price weighted