MSCI Rules Today on Cutting Strategy (MSTR) From Its Indexes After a Draft List Marks It Deleted

Bitcoin Magazine
MSCI Rules Today on Cutting Strategy (MSTR) From Its Indexes After a Draft List Marks It Deleted

MSCI will say Wednesday evening whether Strategy stays in its global stock indexes, after its own potential list already marked the largest corporate bitcoin holder as Deleted.

The index provider publishes its November 2026 Index Review shortly after 5 p.m. ET. MSCI said on Oct. 15 that the review would carry the final list of current constituents hit by the new screen, with any deletions taking effect at the close of Nov. 30.

MSCI’s list of potentially impacted securities, published with the Oct. 15 decision and built on Sept. 30 financial data and Oct. 9 market values, already marks five companies as Deleted: Strategy (MSTR), uranium holder Yellow Cake, Japan’s Metaplanet, Iceland’s Skel Fjárfestingafélag and micro-cap Upexi.

Strategy is the only large-cap name in the group and by float-adjusted market value accounts for more than 90% of the five. The company held 850,364 bitcoin as of Nov. 8, acquired at an average price of $75,456 a coin.

How the MSCI screen works

The rule does not mention bitcoin. MSCI first checks whether a company’s operating assets exceed 50% of total assets. Issuers that fail face five financial ratios, and a company flagged on four or more of them is ineligible for the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes.

Buffers limit turnover. A company outside the indexes cannot be added if it fails the screen in either of its two most recent annual filing periods, but a current constituent is removed only if it fails in each of them. MSCI said it may also use the most recent interim filing.

That two-filing test is the question hanging over Strategy. It adopted fair-value accounting for its bitcoin at the start of 2025, so its fiscal 2024 statements carried the coins at cost less impairment, and MSCI has not said how it treats that earlier year. A Deleted mark implies MSCI’s draft reading is that Strategy already failed both periods, but it has not published the inputs behind that placement.

Strategy has argued that it reports its bitcoin treasury as an operating segment and books related gains and losses in operating expenses.

The screen replaces an approach aimed squarely at crypto. MSCI first proposed in late 2025 to exclude companies whose digital assets made up 50% or more of total assets, then dropped that plan in January and opened a broader consultation in August. The new rule also ends the interim measures MSCI placed on those companies in October 2025, including a freeze on share-count increases and a deferral of additions.

What a deletion would and would not do

Funds that track an MSCI index have to hold what the index holds, so a deletion would force them to sell by the Nov. 30 close. JPMorgan analysts estimated last November that an MSCI exclusion could drive about $2.8 billion of outflows from Strategy, and as much as $8.8 billion more if other index providers followed. That estimate was built on MSCI’s earlier digital-asset proposal, not the October screen, and MSCI itself has published no figure.

A removal would not delist Strategy’s stock, and nothing in the rules forces the company to sell bitcoin. The pressure would land on the shares, and through them on the premium Strategy uses to fund new purchases by selling stock. In an August letter to MSCI, the company said a deletion “would have no meaningful impact on Strategy’s business.”

Strategy’s own cushion is already thin. It bought 1,036 bitcoin for $81.9 million in the week to Nov. 8, a purchase that left its holdings below that average cost. Bitcoin traded near $73,900 Wednesday.

If Strategy fails only its latest filing rather than both, it would not be deleted this round and would instead go on a watchlist. The potential list already places 17 other constituents there, including SharpLink, TON Strategy and Solana Company.

Tokyo-listed Metaplanet faces the same Deleted mark, after it sold bitcoin last quarter to show investors it could tap its holdings for liquidity. The test now is whether Wednesday’s official list sticks with those Deleted marks, or whether MSCI pulls any of the five back onto the watchlist.

This post MSCI Rules Today on Cutting Strategy (MSTR) From Its Indexes After a Draft List Marks It Deleted first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.