Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) continues its eventful year. MSFT shares fell more than 3% on Wednesday in heavy trading to fall below $300. Stocks are threatening the 50-day moving average of $298.57. But it is the $275 level that investors should grab.

Microsoft shares quickly began to fall as tech stocks took a breather in the first quarter. On two occasions (March 8 and March 14), MSFT stock fell to $275. But both times it managed to bounce off those lows to hit $300 again. Now, MSFT seems to be experiencing another downturn. After peaking near $315 on April 4, Microsoft has started to falter again and today opened just under $300.

The biggest issue this week, of course, is the hawkish tone of the US Federal Reserve (Fed). Tech stocks like Microsoft started falling ahead of the release of Fed minutes yesterday after the latest Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. And their fears were somewhat justified. When those minutes were released at 2:00 p.m. Wednesday, the Fed revealed that it was considering trimming its bond holdings by about $95 billion a month. Officials have indicated support for rolling out up to $60 billion in treasury bills and $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities. This would be staggered over three months starting in May. That’s about double the rate the last time the Fed reduced its bond holdings from 2017 to 2019 as it changed monetary policy.

Microsoft and other tech stocks are considered vulnerable to these types of policy changes because higher interest rates affect them negatively. Growth stocks like MSFT see their future earnings discounted in a rising interest rate environment. So far this year, Microsoft is down nearly 11% with a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.05 and a price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of 2.17.

But the company is also a reliable profit machine, with its Microsoft Office suite of products, search engine, cloud app, MSN web portal and Xbox gaming system. She also announced in January that she was buying ActivisionBlizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) for $68.7 billion. The deal would make Microsoft the third-largest games company in the world and the largest games company in the United States.

Fourth-quarter revenue was $51.73 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $50.79 billion. Earnings were $2.48 per share, which also beat expectations of $2.32 per share.

I would be surprised to see MSFT fall below $290 even in this rising interest rate environment. There are too many headwinds to keep this massive tech company down for long. But if stocks fall to this level, MSFT stocks become a must-have name.

At the date of publication, Patrick Sanders held (neither directly nor indirectly) any position in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, subject to InvestorPlace.com publishing guidelines.