MSCI will remove Strategy from its USA Index at the close of November 30

Index provider MSCI will delete Strategy, the Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company that held 850,364 BTC as of November 8, from its MSCI USA Index as of the close of November 30, 2026, according to the list of changes MSCI published on November 11 with its November index review. Funds that track the index will no longer need to hold the stock, which trades on Nasdaq as MSTR.

What MSCI's November review shows

MSCI announced the results of its November 2026 Index Review on November 11 and said all changes take effect as of the close of November 30. Across its global benchmark, the MSCI ACWI Index, 13 securities are added and 100 deleted.

For the United States, MSCI's list of changes names one addition to the MSCI USA Index, Moderna, and 24 deletions, among them Strategy's class A shares. Strategy does not appear among the additions to MSCI's US small-cap index in the small-cap list published the same day, so the lists do not show it moving to a smaller size segment. The MSCI USA Index feeds MSCI's World and ACWI indexes, so the deletion carries through to those, Bitcoin Magazine reported.

The review lists give names only, without a reason for each change. In a separate notice on November 11, MSCI said it had published the final list of securities affected by its Non-Operating Companies Methodology, which takes effect with this review.

The rule behind the deletion

MSCI announced the methodology on October 15, after a consultation. The screen has two steps. MSCI first asks whether a company has substantial operating assets. A company that does not pass that step is tested on five financial ratios, and at least four flags out of five make its shares ineligible. For a stock that is already in an index, one failed year is not enough: deletion requires failing on both of the company's two latest annual filings.

The same announcement said MSCI would end, with the November review, the temporary measures it announced on October 10, 2025 for a preliminary list of companies whose digital asset holdings made up 50% or more of total assets.

An MSCI spreadsheet of securities potentially affected, based on financial data as of September 30 and market values as of October 9, marks five as deleted: Strategy, Metaplanet, Yellow Cake (United Kingdom), Skel Fjárfestingafélag (Iceland), and Upexi (United States). On that list Strategy's float-adjusted market value was about $40.3 billion, roughly 94% of the five companies' combined total by our calculation. A further 17 securities are marked as on a watchlist, including SharpLink, TON Strategy, and Solana Company. The small-cap review list confirms Metaplanet's deletion from the Japan index and Yellow Cake's from the United Kingdom index; we did not open the lists that would cover the other two.

What Strategy has said

As of November 12, we had found no statement from Strategy on the November 11 list; we could not open its web page on the MSCI matter. In an August 31 letter to MSCI's index committee, Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Chief Executive Phong Le called the proposal "discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided" and wrote that, if adopted, it "would have no meaningful impact on Strategy's business."

The letter describes the then-proposed rule as a variation on a proposal MSCI made in October 2025 to exclude companies whose digital assets were at least 50% of total assets, which MSCI later withdrew.

How the market reacted

Strategy's shares closed at $122.35 on November 11 and traded at $120.50 in after-hours trading as of 22:34 UTC, according to Bitcoin Magazine. The Block reported an after-hours price of $119.06, down 2.6%, without giving a time.

We found no estimate of how much stock index funds will sell in the MSCI documents we read. Bitcoin Magazine cited a JPMorgan estimate from November 2025 of about $2.8 billion of outflows from an MSCI exclusion, and up to $8.8 billion more if other index providers followed; the outlet noted that the figure was built on MSCI's earlier proposal, not the current screen. Strategy has said funds tracking MSCI's indexes hold 3.1% of its basic shares, the outlet reported. Trading Notified has not read the JPMorgan note or Strategy's statement.

What it could mean for traders

Funds that replicate an MSCI index hold a stock because it is in the index and no longer need it once it leaves. Bitcoin Magazine reported that such funds must sell the deleted stocks by the close of November 30. The deletion does not delist the shares.

In our assessment, the open question is the link to Strategy's funding. The company paid for its latest Bitcoin purchase by selling its own shares: in the week of November 2 to 8 it raised $283.8 million from MSTR share sales and spent $81.9 million of that on 1,036 BTC, its filing shows. Lower index demand for the shares would matter to that funding only to the extent it affects the price at which Strategy can sell stock, and how large that effect will be is not known.

Our report on Bitmine's $6.3 billion annual net loss covers another listed company that holds crypto as a treasury asset.

What happens next

After November 30, the points to watch are whether other index providers adopt similar screens and what happens to the 17 securities MSCI marks as on a watchlist.