MSCI could cut Strategy from its indexes, list due Nov 11

MSCI will name on November 11 the companies it is removing from its global stock indexes, and Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin (BTC), is on the list of firms at risk. Any removal takes effect after the close on November 30.

That rulebook, finalized on October 15, ends the interim treatment MSCI had given companies whose assets are mostly crypto. It now judges them by a new screen for what counts as a real operating business. The firm floated the plan in August and took feedback through the end of September.

What MSCI changed

MSCI runs the indexes that many passive funds track, so a company dropped from them loses the automatic buying that comes with inclusion. The new rules target what MSCI calls non-operating companies: issuers that, in its words, "create value by accumulating and holding non-operating assets." Investment funds and similar passive vehicles already sat outside the indexes. Now the same logic reaches firms that look like operating businesses on paper but hold mostly crypto or other passive assets.

The timing is tight. MSCI will publish the final list of affected companies on November 11, 2026. Removals take effect after the market close on November 30. Companies already in the indexes get a buffer: MSCI says it will only cut an existing member that fails the test in two consecutive annual reporting periods, with interim filings taken into account.

This is the second time MSCI has circled these companies. In January it chose not to remove digital-asset treasuries from the February review, and instead applied interim measures: caps on how much new stock such firms could issue into the indexes, frozen inclusion weights, and delayed additions. The October rulebook drops that stopgap and folds the question into a single, wider test for non-operating issuers.

How the non-operating test works

Two stages decide it. A core screen checks whether more than half of a company's total assets are operating assets. Pass that, and the review stops. Fail it, and the company faces five financial ratios: operating asset intensity, expense intensity, cash flow, fair value intensity, and capital dependence. A firm is ruled ineligible only if it fails four of the five.

A bitcoin treasury company fails almost by design. Its reason for existing is to hold coins, not to run a business whose assets are plants, inventory or receivables. That is the exact profile the screen is built to catch.

What it means for Strategy

Strategy is the clearest case. The company held 849,327 bitcoin as of November 1, bought for about $64.08 billion at an average price of $75,451 a coin, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Bitcoin is close to its entire enterprise value. Under US accounting rules the firm reports that bitcoin business as an operating segment, and it has argued that treating it as non-operating is unfair.

Index inclusion works quietly but at scale. Funds that track MSCI's benchmarks buy a stock because it is in the index, not because they rate the business, so membership brings a steady, price-insensitive bid. Remove the stock and that bid reverses into forced selling over the rebalancing window. For a company whose share price already swings with bitcoin, losing that cushion adds another move to absorb.

How much selling an exclusion would trigger is the open question. JPMorgan analysts put the possible outflows near $2.8 billion, a slice of a company that owns more than 849,000 bitcoin. The buffer matters too. Because MSCI removes an existing member only after two consecutive periods of failing, a spot on the November 11 list may not mean an immediate exit.

None of this has slowed the buying. Strategy added 811 bitcoin for $65.5 million in the week to November 1, its filing showed. Michael Saylor, the company's executive chairman, trailed the purchase a day earlier with a post on X: "We found room for even more orange." The stock tends to move with bitcoin, which traded near $74,570 at 05:12 UTC on November 9, down about 1.6 percent on the day, according to CoinGecko.

Who else is on the list

Strategy is not alone. MSCI's own simulation, run on holdings from May 2026, flagged Metaplanet, the Tokyo-listed bitcoin holder, along with UK uranium investor Yellow Cake, Iceland's Skel Fjarfestingafelag and the US firm Upexi. Five firms, four countries. A second group sits on a watch list for later review, among them SharpLink, Capital B, Solana Company, DeFi Dev Corp, TON Strategy and Sui Group Holdings.

Crypto is not the only target. Yellow Cake simply stockpiles uranium, and its place on the same list shows MSCI is chasing a balance-sheet shape, not bitcoin in particular. The test asks what a company does, not what it owns, which is also MSCI's defense: a treasury firm and a commodity holder fall the same way.

Corporate bitcoin buying has not paused for the review. Strive added 15,124 bitcoin in October, lifting its total to 43,124 coins. The firms on MSCI's list say the rules misread what they do, and some pushed back during the consultation.

What to watch

The list on November 11 is the first hard signal. It will show which companies MSCI judged non-operating under live data, beyond the ones its May simulation flagged. Two dates matter after that. Whether Strategy makes the cut decides if the two-period buffer pushes any removal into 2027, and the November 30 effective date is when funds tracking the indexes would have to sell. One caution sits over all of it. MSCI softened its stance once already this year before hardening it in October, so the final call is not fixed until the list is published.