Strategy Made $19.5 Billion in Profit. So Why Is MSCI Removing It From Stock Indexes?
In brief
- MSCI will remove Strategy’s MSTR shares from its MSCI USA Index, affecting broader global benchmarks, after November 30.
- The index provider’s new rules target companies that resemble investment funds rather than operating businesses.
- Selling by index-tracking funds could pressure Strategy’s stock, potentially reducing the money it can raise to buy Bitcoin.
Strategy made $19.53 billion in profit last quarter. Yet MSCI, one of the world’s biggest providers of stock indexes, has decided Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin company no longer belongs in some of its major investment benchmarks.
MSCI’s November review lists “STRATEGY A”—the company’s MSTR shares—for deletion from the MSCI USA Index after trading closes November 30. That also removes the stock from broader indexes that include U.S. companies, such as the MSCI World and MSCI All Country World indexes.
That sounds technical, but the distinction matters: MSCI is not removing Strategy from the Nasdaq stock exchange, shutting down its business, or making it sell Bitcoin. It is taking MSTR out of stock lists that investment funds use to decide which companies to own.
Consider an ETF designed to copy the MSCI USA Index. When MSTR disappears from the list, the fund generally has to sell its shares, regardless of whether the fund manager likes Saylor’s strategy.
This is why it’s bad news for Strategy. It means less indirect exposition to investments.
Why is MSCI kicking Strategy out?
MSCI adopted new rules in October for so-called non-operating companies. The idea is to keep investment vehicles—businesses that mainly hold financial assets—out of indexes meant to track operating companies. Its screening process considers a company’s operating assets and other financial measures.
MSCI’s deletion list does not spell out exactly which tests Strategy failed. The company, however, argues that raising capital, managing its Bitcoin treasury and issuing financial products amount to a genuine operating business.
In an August letter to MSCI, Strategy called the proposal “discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided.” It argued that MSCI should be a “mirror of the market, not an arbiter of it.”
Strategy also maintains a software business, but Bitcoin now dominates its finances. The disagreement is whether its Bitcoin activity counts as running a company or mainly managing an investment portfolio.
→Strategy’s latest quarterly earnings show $19.53 billion in net income. But that does not mean its software customers paid the company anything close to that amount.
Nearly all of its $20.91 billion in reported operating income came from a rise in the accounting value of its Bitcoin. Under rules adopted in 2025, changes in Bitcoin’s market price appear in Strategy’s earnings even when it has not sold the coins. A decline in Bitcoin can produce the opposite result.
Its software division, meanwhile, recorded $125.4 million in quarterly revenue, down 3% from a year earlier. Its $477.2 million in revenue for all of 2025 was slightly below the $486.3 million reported in 2019, before Strategy began buying Bitcoin.
Could this hurt Bitcoin?
The immediate risk is selling pressure on MSTR, not on Bitcoin itself. Strategy estimated that funds linked to MSCI indexes hold roughly 13 million of its shares, or 3.1% of its outstanding common stock. Not all of that necessarily translates into sudden sales, and Strategy says the amount is manageable.
But Strategy has repeatedly raised money by selling shares and other securities, then used those proceeds to buy Bitcoin. If its stock falls, selling the same number of new shares brings in less cash.
So the company would have to issue more shares to raise the same amount—or buy fewer Bitcoin.
That is why a stock-index decision could eventually matter to the crypto market. The exclusion does not force a Bitcoin sale, and it does not guarantee fewer purchases. It could, however, weaken a key source of funding for one of Bitcoin’s biggest corporate buyers.
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