In the current session, Microsoft Inc. MSFT is trading at $231.92, after a 2.05% rise. Over the past month, the stock increased by 8.91%, and in the past year, by 65.60%. With performance like this, long-term shareholders optimistic but others are more likely to look into the price-to-earnings ratio to see if the stock might be overvalued.

Assuming that all other factors are held constant, this could present itself as an opportunity for shareholders trying to capitalize on the higher share price. The stock is currently above from its 52 week high by 0.33%.

The P/E ratio measures the current share price to the company's EPS. It is used by long-term investors to analyze the company’s current performance against its past earnings, historical data and aggregate market data for the industry or the indices, such as S&P 500. A higher P/E indicates that investors expect the company to perform better in the future, and the stock is probably overvalued, but not necessarily. It also shows that investors are willing to pay a higher share price currently, because they expect the company to perform better in the upcoming quarters. This leads investors to also remain optimistic about rising dividends in the future.

Depending on the particular phase of a business cycle, some industries will perform better than others.

Compared to the aggregate P/E ratio of the 41.35 in the Software—Infrastructure industry, Microsoft Inc. has a lower P/E ratio of 39.46. Shareholders might be inclined to think that they might perform worse than its industry peers. It’s also possible that the stock is undervalued.

Price to earnings ratio is not always a great indicator of the company's performance. Depending on the earnings makeup of a company, investors may not be able to attain key insights from trailing earnings.