What Does Microsoft’s Slide Mean for a 67-Year-Old With $700,000 of a $2.4 Million IRA in the Stock? Joel South Fri, November 13, 2026 at 8:03 AM EST 7 min read MSFT -1.25% ANTH.PVT Trade MSFT on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Microsoft (MSFT) fell 6% in a week after Anthropic unveiled Office-rivaling tools, cutting a $700,000 stake by about $48,000.
Selling or rebalancing Microsoft inside a traditional IRA triggers no current tax; tax hits only when money leaves the account.
With Microsoft near 29% of the IRA, its December 31 price moves every required withdrawal, so concentration shapes future RMDs.
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Five trading days were enough to show what a single stock can do to a retirement account. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares closed at $520.18 on Nov. 11, 2026, nearly 6% lower than their one-month high. The selling picked up after Anthropic revealed tools built to match Office and Excel, and on Wednesday MarketWatch named Microsoft as the stock doing the most to pull the Dow lower.
Picture a hypothetical married couple filing jointly. The IRA owner is 67. They have managed their own money for years and let Microsoft grow to $700,000 of a $2.4 million traditional IRA, which works out to about 29.2% of the account. That is concentration risk: One company now drives close to a third of the result for money that has to last the rest of their lives. The slide has effects for their taxes, their income and the withdrawals the IRS will eventually require.
Look at the full set of periods and you see a short-term pullback inside a stock that has won for a long time:
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1 month: down 3.88%, from $541.15
Year to date: up 8.24%, from $480.56 at the end of 2025
10 years: up 892.53%, from an adjusted $52.41
In dollars, the past week took the couple's stake from about $747,933 to $700,000, a drop of about $47,933. The ten-year number shows how the position got this big. On an adjusted price basis, a stake worth about $70,528 a decade ago would be worth $700,000 today. When a winner is never trimmed, it slowly takes over the whole portfolio.
The business itself is still delivering. In its fiscal first-quarter report on October 28, 2026, Microsoft posted non-GAAP EPS of $4.89, ahead of the $4.72 consensus. Revenue rose 18.8% to $92.28 billion, and Azure grew 48%. That made six consecutive quarters of EPS beats.
Spending is what worries investors. Capital expenditures came to $45.2 billion in the quarter. Management guided to over $50 billion for the second quarter and approximately $170 billion for the calendar year. Microsoft Cloud gross margin slipped to 66%, with about 65% expected next quarter, and commercial bookings fell 12%. CEO Satya Nadella pushed back on the doubts: "I've never been more confident in the long-term returns for our investments."
Microsoft has been through this before. After its fiscal Q2 2026 beat, the stock fell 9.99% on earnings day and was down 6.82% 30 days later. After the fiscal Q4 2026 beat, it jumped 15.51% in a day. A concentrated holder lives with swings of that size.
For this couple, the account type changes the math. Inside a traditional IRA, selling or rebalancing triggers no current tax. Tax shows up only when money leaves the account: under 26 U.S.C. § 408(d)(1), IRA distributions are included in gross income and taxed as ordinary income. If they trimmed $340,000 of Microsoft to bring it down to 15% of the IRA, their tax bill for tax year 2026 would be zero, as long as the proceeds stay in the IRA. In a taxable brokerage account, the same trade could set off a large capital gain.
A point many retirees miss: the NUA rule covers only employer stock distributed in kind from a 401(k) or other qualified plan. It does not apply to shares held in an IRA. Once Microsoft stock is in this account, NUA is no longer an option. A partial Roth conversion is a separate decision, and any converted amount would count as ordinary income in the year it is converted.
IRS Publication 554 for tax year 2025 says traditional IRA owners must start distributions by April 1 of the year following the year in which you reach age 73. At 67, the owner is six years away. Under current law, missing a required distribution brings an excise tax of 25% of the shortfall under 26 U.S.C. § 4974(a).
The account's prior year-end balance sets each RMD. With close to a third of the IRA in one stock, Microsoft's price on December 31 will move every required withdrawal. Say Microsoft falls 25% and everything else stays flat. The IRA loses $175,000, or about 7.29% of its value, and the next RMD shrinks with it. A strong rally works the other way, raising the forced withdrawal and the ordinary income they have to report. For the full calculation, see our RMD Playbook.
Dividends help, though not much. The forward dividend of $3.92 per share comes to about $5,275 a year on this stake, and it builds up untaxed inside the IRA until it is withdrawn.
1. Hold: They keep full exposure to second-quarter guidance calling for Azure growth of 49% to 50% in constant currency and revenue of $96 billion to $97.1 billion. They also accept that one more bad run hits the entire IRA.
2. Cut the position and spread the risk inside the IRA: Moving $340,000 into other holdings lowers concentration right away at no 2026 tax cost. If the stock rebounds the way it did after fiscal Q4 2026, they miss part of that gain.
3. Rebalance gradually: Selling about $85,000 a quarter for four quarters spreads out the sale prices. The catch is that they stay exposed while they work down to the target.
None of the three creates tax in tax year 2026. The tax decision that really matters comes later, with withdrawals, and how concentrated the account is when those begin will shape how big they are (we mapped out how a large pre-tax balance becomes a first-year RMD tax hit, and how to avoid it years early, in a free guide here).
Microsoft's next ex-dividend date is Nov. 19, 2026, for a 98-cent payment on Dec. 10. After that, the next earnings report is the key test: Whether CapEx above $50 billion produces the Azure growth management promised, and whether Anthropic's push into Office cuts into Microsoft's productivity business. If both go well, holding a concentrated position gets easier to support. If either goes badly, a 29% stake becomes the single biggest risk in the couple's retirement.
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