Michael Saylor and chief executive Phong Le sent MSCI a letter on Monday 1 September opposing a proposed rule that would screen out listed companies whose operating assets fall below half of total assets. A simulation on May 2026 data flagged Strategy, Japan’s Metaplanet and the uranium holder Yellow Cake for removal from the ACWI IMI index. JPMorgan has put the resulting passive selling at about $2.8 billion for Strategy alone, and as much as $8.8 billion if other index providers copy the change.
The screen runs five financial-ratio tests, and four failing marks disqualify a company. Strategy’s reply is that “operating” and “non-operating” are not defined terms in accounting standards, and that a treasury company deploying bitcoin as productive capital is running a business, not a fund. The letter calls the proposal discriminatory, arbitrary and misguided, and says it would damage MSCI’s standing as a neutral index provider more than Strategy’s business.
The exposure is structural, not sentimental. Strategy has raised billions selling shares and convertible debt at a premium to the bitcoin it holds, and index membership helps sustain both that premium and the pool of forced buyers. Drop it from MSCI World and MSCI USA and passive funds must sell whatever they make of the company. An index definition, not a move in the bitcoin price, could push the largest corporate holder to test its cost of capital.
MSCI is taking comments until 30 September and will publish a decision by 16 October, effective in December if adopted. It floated a similar exclusion last year and dropped it in January. Whether the estimates hold depends on the share price on any deletion date, and on whether FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones follow. Neither is settled.
