MSCI to Decide Whether Strategy Keeps Its Place in Global Indexes After Draft List Flags It for Removal

MSCI will announce Wednesday evening whether Strategy remains in its global stock indexes, after a preliminary list already flagged the largest corporate holder of bitcoin for deletion.

The index provider is set to release its November 2026 Index Review just after 5 p.m. ET. MSCI said on Oct. 15 that the review would carry the definitive list of existing constituents caught by the new screen, with any removals taking effect at the close of trading on Nov. 30.

MSCI’s roster of potentially affected securities, released alongside the Oct. 15 decision and built on Sept. 30 financial data and Oct. 9 market values, already designates five companies as Deleted: Strategy (MSTR), uranium investor Yellow Cake, Japan’s Metaplanet, Iceland’s Skel Fjárfestingafélag, and micro-cap Upexi.

Strategy is the only large-cap company among the group and, by float-adjusted market value, represents more than 90% of the five. As of Nov. 8, it held 850,364 bitcoin, acquired at an average price of $75,456 per coin.

How MSCI’s screening works

The rule makes no reference to bitcoin. MSCI first assesses whether a company’s operating assets exceed 50% of its total assets. Issuers that fail this test are then evaluated against five financial ratios, and any company flagged on four or more of them becomes ineligible for the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes.

Buffer rules are designed to 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 an existing constituent is removed only if it fails in both. MSCI noted that it may also draw on the most recent interim filing.

That two-filing test is the central question hanging over Strategy. The company 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 yet to clarify how it treats that earlier year. The Deleted mark implies MSCI’s preliminary reading is that Strategy already failed both periods, though the provider has not published the inputs behind that classification.

Strategy has maintained that it reports its bitcoin treasury as an operating segment and records the associated gains and losses within operating expenses.

What a deletion would — and would not — mean

Funds that track an MSCI index are required to hold whatever the index holds, so a deletion would compel them to sell by the Nov. 30 close. JPMorgan analysts estimated last November that an MSCI exclusion could drive roughly $2.8 billion in outflows from Strategy, and as much as $8.8 billion more should other index providers follow suit. That estimate, however, was built on MSCI’s earlier digital-asset proposal rather than the October screen, and MSCI itself has published no figure.

A removal would not delist Strategy’s stock, nor does anything in the rules force the company to sell bitcoin. The pressure would instead land on its shares and, through them, on the premium Strategy relies on to fund new purchases by issuing stock. In an August letter to MSCI, the company stated that a deletion “would have no meaningful impact on Strategy’s business.”

Strategy’s own cushion is already thin. It purchased 1,036 bitcoin for $81.9 million in the week to Nov. 8, a buy that left the value of its holdings below that average cost. Bitcoin was trading near $73,900 on Wednesday.

Should Strategy fail only its most recent filing rather than both, it would avoid deletion in this round and instead be placed on a watchlist. The preliminary list already assigns 17 other constituents to that watchlist, among them SharpLink, TON Strategy, and Solana Company.

Tokyo-listed Metaplanet carries the same Deleted mark, following its decision to sell bitcoin last quarter in a bid to show investors it could tap its holdings for liquidity. The test now is whether Wednesday’s official list retains those Deleted designations or whether MSCI moves any of the five back onto the watchlist.

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