[teraflop]

The back taxes add up to about 1.2% of Microsoft's current market cap, and it looks like the stock is down roughly 0.6% in after-hours trading. So I guess the market collectively estimates MS will end up owing about half of that amount.

[extraduder_ire]

Or, the number is only slightly higher than investors inspected. I assume this isn't the first news of this issue with the SEC and news like this was already priced-in to the stock.

[bux93]

Even if it is the first news of this particular issue, it doesn't surprise anyone when one of these big corps is hit with a big fine.

The announcement of back taxed for the years 2004-2013 at least places an upper bound on those past years. So this means that Microsoft investors now only have to worry about accounting failures over the years 2014-present! Less uncertainty = good news!

[queuebert]

You're giving traders way too much credit for rationality here.