Correlation Analysis
Microsoft Corp vs Paychex Inc
MSFT vs PAYX
+0.440
Moderate positive
When one moves up, the other tends to follow.
Microsoft Corp
↗MSFT
Microsoft develops and licenses consumer and enterprise software. It is known for its Windows operating systems and Office productivity suite. The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes (legacy Microsoft Office, cloud-based Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, LinkedIn, Dynamics), intelligence cloud (infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service offerings Azure, Windows Server OS, SQL Server), and more personal computing (Windows Client, Xbox, Bing search, display advertising, and Surface laptops, tablets, and desktops).
Market cap 2.8T
Paychex Inc
↗PAYX
Paychex is a technology company providing human capital management solutions, enabling clients to better implement payroll, talent, time, tax, and benefits administration. It has a diverse set of product offerings addressing client needs. Aside from its traditional cloud-based payroll and HCM software offering, which accounts for close to half of total revenue, the company provides outsourcing options. Paychex's administrative service organization and professional employer organization accounts generate over 40% of sales. The balance of revenue is generated through retirement services, insurance solutions, and other products. In fiscal 2025, the company had 800,000 clients and almost 2.5 million worksite employees across its ASO and PEO.
Market cap 32.9B · 19,000 employees
Who Moves First
PAYX leads MSFT by 6 days
PAYX tends to move before MSFT.
Best correlation after shifting: +0.450 (13 shifts scanned)
Do They Crash Together?
Correlation by Market Regime
How these series behave when markets are rising, falling, or diverging. A correlation that holds in drawdowns is very different from one that only works in rallies.
Both Rising
+0.093
12 periods · Return correlation when both series rose
Both Falling
+0.518
11 periods · Return correlation when both series fell
Diverging
-0.780
12 periods · Return correlation when series moved apart
R-Squared
19.3%
Share of variance in one series explained by the other.
Trend Agreement
66.1%
How often both series moved in the same direction period-to-period.
Overlap Quality
1,254
Deep shared window — 1,254 usable pairs.
Significance
p < 0.001
95% CI: [0.394, 0.483]
Time Series
Rebased to 100
Scatter
XY Regression
Pipeline
Data quality details
Pipeline
Data quality details
Pipeline Summary
1,254 paired observations survived the daily window.
Raw input
1,254
1,254
Normalized
1,254
1,254
Prepared
1,254
1,254
Aligned
1,254
1,254
Invalid removed
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Duplicates removed
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Alignment drops
0
A: 0 / B: 0
Series A
Microsoft Corp
MSFT
Market cap 2.8T
Stock · 1,254 raw → 1,254 prepared
Series B
Paychex Inc
PAYX
Market cap 32.9B · 19,000 employees
Stock · 1,254 raw → 1,254 prepared
Sign agreement
100.0%
How often both values share the same sign.
Zero crossings
13
Estimated crossover points between normalized spreads.
Slope
0.0740
Linear regression slope.
Intercept
96.1338
Linear regression intercept.
Related Extremes
Highest and Lowest Correlated
Saved 3 hours ago · ID: stock-msft-vs-stock-payx-daily-20260408-3u84x0