When the stock market is down to the extent that it has been for nearly a year now, it tends to spark a flight to quality. This means that investors, having been burned by speculative growth stocks and other highfliers, are retreating to the tried and true -- companies that are stable, established, and attractively valued based on earnings expectations.

However, many of these quality companies have prohibitively high share prices, given their long histories of earnings growth. For some investors, it may not even be feasible to buy a single share. One such blue chip name is technology giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), the third-largest company in the world with a market cap of roughly $2 trillion. However, there is an easy way to invest in Microsoft for the cost of a penny stock.

Microsoft has been one of the top-performing stocks since it went public in 1986 at $21 per share. Since then, it has posted an average annualized return of 24%, and that's including multiple stock splits, the last coming in 2003. It has been remarkably consistent, as its average annualized return over the last 10 years as of Aug. 29 is also 24%. It is currently trading at $268 per share, down 20% year to date (YTD).

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Source Fool.com