The short version
- MSCI Strategy exclusion confirmed: Strategy (MSTR) and Metaplanet leave MSCI’s indexes at the close on November 30, and funds tracking MSCI USA, World and ACWI have to sell.
- JPMorgan’s estimate of about $2.8 billion in MSCI-linked selling equals roughly 22.9 million MSTR shares, a little more than one day of normal trading.
- Bitcoin at $73,566 sits about $1,890 below Strategy’s $75,456 average cost, and less than a third of last week’s $283.8 million in MSTR sales went into Bitcoin.
- Next: the closing auction at 21:00 UTC on Monday, November 30 (4:00 p.m. in New York), when index funds sell. Follow Base Camp on X to see the numbers that day.
Index funds don’t get a vote, and now they have a sell date. MSCI confirmed the MSCI Strategy exclusion late on Wednesday, so every fund that tracks MSCI USA, MSCI World or MSCI ACWI has to be out of Strategy (MSTR) by the close on November 30.
Nobody was surprised. Strategy wrote in its own quarterly report two weeks ago that it expected the cut, and MSTR finished Wednesday’s session at $122.35, up 1.1% on the day, before the list came out. The stock had already lost 19% since MSCI adopted the rule in October.
So what is left to price in, and does any of it reach Bitcoin? Bloomberg framed it as a problem for the way Strategy pays for its coins:
MSCI has dropped Strategy from its global equity benchmarks, potentially triggering billions of dollars in stock sales and adding fresh pressure to the financing model behind Michael Saylor’s vast Bitcoin holdings bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
What Did MSCI Confirm on Wednesday?
Strategy leaves the MSCI USA Index, and with it MSCI World and MSCI ACWI, as of the close on November 30. Metaplanet, Japan’s biggest Bitcoin treasury company, goes in the same review.
MSCI posted its November index review at 22:04 UTC on November 11 (5:04 p.m. in New York): 100 deletions from MSCI ACWI, all of them effective at the November 30 close. About 20 minutes later it published the final impact list for its new “non-operating companies” rule, and a separate notice said the same treatment applies to the MSCI US index series from this review on.
The rule never mentions Bitcoin. A company fails when most of its assets aren’t operating assets and it then flags on four of five financial ratios. Strategy holds about $62.6 billion in Bitcoin next to a software business that brings in roughly $125 million a quarter, so it was never going to pass. We walked through the test and MSCI’s draft list in our preview of the MSCI Strategy decision.
Metaplanet took it calmly too. The stock was down about 2% in Tokyo trading on Thursday, near $1.42 a share.
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How Much MSTR Do Index Funds Have to Sell?
The most quoted figure is JPMorgan’s: about $2.8 billion of MSTR held by funds that track MSCI. At Wednesday’s close that works out to roughly 22.9 million shares.
For context, MSTR traded an average of 17.7 million shares a day over the past month. In other words, the whole MSCI sale is a little more than one normal day of volume, and there are 12 trading sessions left for anyone who wants to sell early. JPMorgan’s figure is a year old and was set when MSTR traded higher, so the real number is likely smaller.
Most index funds won’t sell early. They need to match the index, so they trade at the closing price on November 30, which is why rebalance days often end with a burst of volume in the last minutes of trading. Active funds and traders know that date too, and the drop since October 15 suggests much of the selling has been done ahead of it.
The chart shows where MSTR stands going in. It closed at $151.29 on October 15, the day MSCI adopted the rule, and sits at $122.35 now, below both its 50-day moving average (MA) of $144.10 and its 200-day MA of $133.16. Tuesday’s $121.07 close was its lowest since August 21.
Bitcoin Trades Below the Strategy Cost Basis
This is the part Bitcoin holders care about. Bitcoin is at $73,566 at the time of writing, down 8.6% over the past week and about $1,890 below the Strategy cost basis of $75,456 a coin.
Strategy’s latest filing puts its stack at 850,364 BTC, bought for $64.16 billion. At today’s price that is worth about $62.56 billion, a paper loss near $1.6 billion.
The MSCI Strategy exclusion doesn’t force the company to sell a single coin. What it squeezes is the machine that buys them. Strategy funds its purchases mostly by selling new MSTR shares, and the stock’s premium over its Bitcoin is what makes that work. Fewer natural buyers for the stock means less room to keep issuing.
The week to November 8 already showed how much of the money goes elsewhere:
Less than a third of the $283.8 million went into Bitcoin. Two thirds went into buying back STRC, Strategy’s preferred stock. That says more about where the company’s attention is right now than any index headline.
SIDE TRAIL: Strategy Break-Even Price: Bitcoin Sits Just 6.8% Above $75,446
Could Other Index Providers Follow MSCI?
They could, and that is the bigger number. JPMorgan put the selling at up to $8.8 billion if other index providers copied MSCI’s approach, and Strategy warned in its 10-Q that MSCI’s move “could also prompt other index providers to adopt similar criteria or exclude us from their indices.”
Posts on X jumped straight to that scenario overnight:
🚨 MSCI EXCLUDES MICHAEL SAYLOR'S STRATEGY FROM ITS INDEXES, EFFECTIVE DEC. 1
• $MSTR DEEMED "NON-OPERATING COMPANY"
• $8B OUTFLOWS FROM INDEX STRATEGIES
• JAPAN'S METAPLANET ALSO EXCLUDED
Strategy can’t come back quickly either. Under MSCI’s rule, a company outside the index only gets added again if it passes in both of its last two annual filings. With almost all of Strategy’s assets in Bitcoin, that isn’t a question for 2027.
TRAIL MAP: Bitcoin Treasury Companies Selling: Seven Firms Sold Every Coin, and We Checked the Filings
MSCI Strategy Exclusion: Dates Before the Cut
Bitcoin sits just above its 200-day MA of $73,148 on the daily chart, with the 50-day MA up at $80,990. The stock and the coin go into the rebalance on weak footing, which leaves these dates:
- Thu, Nov 12, 14:30 UTC (9:30 a.m. New York): MSTR’s first full session with the final list public.
- Mon, Nov 30, 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. New York): the closing auction where MSCI-tracking funds sell.
- Tue, Dec 1: Strategy and Metaplanet trade outside MSCI’s indexes for the first time.
The stock leaves the index. The 850,364 coins stay exactly where they are.
VikingXBT has been trading crypto since 2017. The focus is futures, onchain data and automation. Onchain flows get checked before a chart is trusted, and anything repetitive gets automated. VikingXBT built Base Camp's own onchain scanner, which flags bundlers, snipers, dev holdings and wallet clusters in one view, and backtests strategies before trading them.
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