MSCI confirms Strategy’s removal from its USA, World and ACWI indexes at the 30 November close

MSCI has confirmed the Strategy index removal that its October rule made possible. The index provider’s November 2026 review, posted shortly after 5 pm New York time on Wednesday 11 November (about 22:00 UTC), lists “Strategy A” among 24 deletions from the MSCI USA Index, according to the public list of the MSCI Global Standard Indexes. The change takes effect at the close of business on Monday 30 November, and because the MSCI USA Index is the US part of the MSCI World and MSCI ACWI, funds that replicate those benchmarks will drop the bitcoin treasury company on the same evening.

Strategy is not alone. MSCI’s small-cap list for the same review removes Metaplanet from the MSCI Japan small-cap segment and Yellow Cake from the UK one. Bitcoin Magazine reports two more deletions that do not appear in the MSCI lists cited above: Upexi from the US micro-cap index and the Icelandic investment firm Skel from a frontier-markets small-cap index. None of MSCI’s documents gives a reason for any single deletion.

Strategy shares closed at $122.35 on Wednesday, up 1.06%, before the list came out, and then traded between 1.5% and 2.6% lower after hours, depending on the source and the time of the quote (details below). The decision forces index funds to sell, not Strategy. How much they will sell is still disputed: JPMorgan’s November 2025 estimate of about $2.8 billion against Strategy’s own figure of roughly 13 million shares.

What MSCI’s November lists say about Strategy, Metaplanet and the others

The MSCI USA Index adds one company in this review, Moderna, and removes 24. Strategy sits in that column next to names with no link to crypto, such as Carlyle Group, Gen Digital, Corteva, Weyerhaeuser and the bitcoin miner turned AI cloud operator IREN. For the other 23, this is a move down a size band: every one of them reappears among the 50 additions to the MSCI USA Small Cap Index in the small-cap list published the same day. Strategy does not. It leaves the MSCI USA Investable Market Index altogether.

In the Global Small Cap list, Metaplanet is the only deletion from the Japanese small-cap index, against 14 additions. Yellow Cake, a London-listed company that holds physical uranium, is one of four deletions in the UK small-cap index. Both were named, with Strategy, in the simulation MSCI attached to its August consultation, so their exit was expected.

MSCI’s own press release for the review only gives totals: 13 additions to and 100 deletions from the MSCI ACWI, and 113 additions to and 272 deletions from the broader MSCI ACWI IMI. It does not mention Strategy or digital assets. The company names come from the country lists.

Bitcoin Magazine adds that all five companies were already marked as deleted in MSCI’s potential-impact list of October, and that Strategy alone made up more than 90% of their combined float-adjusted market value. Those two details come from that outlet only.

From a possible exit in October to a dated one

The rule itself is not new. MSCI announced on 15 October, in the evening UTC, that “non-operating companies” would no longer be eligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes, the family that contains the MSCI World, ACWI and USA. We covered that decision and the long consultation behind it in our report on the rule MSCI adopted in October. What was a list of companies that could leave is now a list of companies that will leave, with a date.

The screen does not mention bitcoin. According to MSCI announcement of 15 October, a company first passes a test for substantial operating assets. If it fails, MSCI looks at five financial ratios that apply to every industry, and a company flagged on four or more of the five is ineligible. Two buffers soften it. A company outside the indexes cannot be added if it fails in either of its last two annual filing periods. A company already inside is removed only if it fails in both.

MSCI gives no company-specific reasons. The second buffer is still the likeliest reason why watchlist names stay: in MSCI’s August simulation, as reported by The Block, SharpLink and two other companies had failed in one annual period only, while Strategy, Metaplanet and Yellow Cake were already on the deletion path.

With this review MSCI also ends what its announcement calls the interim measures announced on 10 October 2025 for companies whose digital assets made up 50% or more of total assets: no increases in their number of shares or inclusion factors in the indexes, and no additions or size-band moves. The 50% threshold belonged to that older plan. The rule now in force uses the ratios instead.

How big the forced selling could be: two estimates that do not match

The best-known figure is JPMorgan’s. In a note reported by The Block on 20 November 2025, analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou estimated that an MSCI exclusion could push about $2.8 billion of passive money out of Strategy, and about $8.8 billion more if other index providers followed. The bank wrote this about the earlier proposal, built on the 50% threshold, when Strategy was worth about $50 billion. The note itself is known only through press reports, and MSCI has never published an estimate of its own.

Strategy gives a smaller number. In its reply to the consultation in August, the company said funds tracking MSCI’s global investable indexes held about 13 million of its shares, or 3.1% of its basic shares outstanding, and that this was less than one day’s trading volume, as reported by Cointelegraph and Bitcoin Magazine.

At Wednesday’s closing price of $122.35, 13 million shares are worth about $1.59 billion. The same price turns JPMorgan’s $2.8 billion into roughly 22.9 million shares. The two figures were made at different dates, on different versions of the rule and with different share prices, so they cannot be lined up neatly, and neither can be checked against MSCI data in public. Both are company or bank estimates, not facts about 30 November.

One more limit applies to both. The date has been public for weeks. Passive funds usually trade at the closing price of the effective day to stay in line with their index, but other traders who know the order is coming can sell earlier and buy back in the auction, so the move on 30 November itself may say little about the total amount sold.

The share price reaction was small after hours

The figures differ by source and by the minute. Bitcoin Magazine put MSTR at $120.50, down 1.51%, at 5:34 pm New York time (22:34 UTC) on Wednesday. The Block, in an article published at 6:09 pm New York time (23:09 UTC), reported a drop of 2.6% to $119.06 without giving the time of the quote. Cointelegraph, on Thursday, reported a fall of 1.65% after hours, with no price or time. No pre-market price for Thursday was available at 05:50 UTC.

Metaplanet had already closed in Tokyo before the lists came out, down 2.53% at 231 yen on Wednesday, according to The Block. Its first session with the news is Thursday’s.

Bitcoin was at $73,486 on Coinbase at 05:36 UTC on Thursday (close of that one-minute candle), down 0.3% from the same minute on Wednesday and 8.6% from a week earlier. That is below Strategy’s average purchase cost of $75,456 for its 850,364 BTC, a level the company itself reported in its filing of 9 November.

What the deletion does not do

It does not delist the stock. MSTR stays on Nasdaq and can be bought and sold as before. It does not oblige Strategy to sell a single bitcoin, a point Bitcoin Magazine also makes. The sellers are the index funds and the managers who copy MSCI benchmarks, and they sell MSTR shares, not coins.

The pressure, if there is any, runs through the share price. Strategy funds its purchases by selling shares and preferred stock, and its STRC preferred shares now have a dividend record date every calendar day. When MSTR trades well above the value of the bitcoin it holds, each new share sold buys more bitcoin than it dilutes. A lower share price shrinks that premium. The company’s latest moves in that direction are in our report on its 9 November filing, in which two-thirds of $284 million raised from stock sales went to STRC buybacks, and the mechanics of the daily payouts in our piece on STRC daily dividends.

What Strategy has said, and what it has not

None of the press reports cited here carries a new statement, filing or post on the 11 November decision by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor or Chief Executive Phong Le. The company’s position is the one it set out during the consultation, when Saylor and Le called the proposed treatment of digital asset treasuries discriminatory.

In an August letter, Bitcoin Magazine reports, Strategy wrote that a deletion “would have no meaningful impact on Strategy’s business”. The company also argued that MSCI was repackaging the plan it dropped in January 2026, and that an index provider should measure markets rather than dictate what companies hold. Strategy reports its bitcoin holdings as an operating segment under US accounting rules, which is the core of its claim that it is not a non-operating company.

SharpLink and the watchlist stay in, for now

The names that were flagged once but not twice survived this review. Bitcoin Magazine counts 17 companies on MSCI’s potential watchlist, including SharpLink, TON Strategy and Solana Company, and none of them appears among the deletions. The Block also reports that SharpLink was not removed. The ether treasury company’s latest numbers are in our look at the Q3 marks of crypto treasury companies.

Because of the two-year buffer, a company on the watchlist that fails the screen again in its next annual filing could be removed at a later review. MSCI has not said which review that would be for any named company. Metaplanet’s case is settled the other way. The Tokyo company, which is also taking over a US listing through the 2,100 BTC deal approved by Super League holders, leaves the Japanese small-cap index without any reason given by MSCI. Metaplanet had published no comment on the deletion by 05:45 UTC on 12 November.

What it changes for holders of a world index fund

Anyone who owns an ETF or mutual fund tracking the MSCI World or MSCI ACWI, a common core holding in Europe and the United States, holds a small slice of Strategy today. After the close of 30 November, that slice disappears from the fund, without any action from the investor, since the fund itself makes the trade. The weight of a single US mid-sized company in a global index is a fraction of a percent, so the effect on the fund’s return is tiny.

Investors who chose a world fund partly to avoid direct crypto exposure will, in practice, have less of it from December. Investors who wanted that exposure through the index will have to buy it elsewhere.

Timeline of the MSCI case

What comes next: 30 November and the other index providers

The next fixed date is Monday 30 November. MSCI says the lists may still be updated before then to reflect corporate events or other adjustments made after the 20 October price cutoff. Rebalancing days usually bring heavy closing-auction volume across many stocks, and MSTR’s volume that evening will be the clearest public sign of how much index money was still left to sell.

The larger question is whether other index providers follow, because that is the second half of JPMorgan’s estimate. So far none has said so publicly in the sources we found. FTSE Russell moved the other way this year: ether treasury firm SharpLink and Solana treasury firm Forward Industries were set to join the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 at the June 2026 reconstitution, The Block reported in May, and FTSE Russell now runs a separate index series for companies with large digital asset holdings. Its published page for that series says nothing about removing such companies from its broad indexes. S&P Dow Jones Indices, Nasdaq and CRSP have made no public 2026 statement on the topic.

Strategy can also try to come back. Under the rule, a company outside the indexes must pass the screen in both of its last two annual filing periods before MSCI adds it again, which means at least two more annual reports under a different balance-sheet profile. Nothing in Strategy’s recent filings points to such a change.

In the shorter run, bitcoin traders have two dates this week that matter more for the price: the US producer price index and the bitcoin blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining difficulty adjustment, both on Friday 13 November.