MSCI Moves to Cut Strategy and Metaplanet, Risking $2 Billion in Outflows

MSCI proposes to exclude non-operating companies from its indexes

MSCI, one of the largest global index providers, has opened a public consultation on rules that would reclassify some listed firms as non-operating companies. The proposal targets businesses that create value mainly by accumulating and holding non-operating assets, rather than earning cash from a core operation. If applied to current data, the screen would remove Strategy, Metaplanet, and uranium holder Yellow Cake from the MSCI ACWI IMI Index. That benchmark feeds many passive funds, so exclusion would cut the three companies from portfolios that track it. These benchmarks span thousands of stocks across developed and emerging markets, and asset managers use them to build index funds.

The screen applies a two-step operating-asset test

The methodology works in two stages. A first Core Screen checks whether a company's operating assets make up more than 50% of its total assets. A firm that clears this threshold stays eligible. A second Exclusion Screen then applies five financial ratios: operating asset intensity, expense intensity, operating cash flow, non-operating fair value changes, and capital dependence. A company becomes ineligible only if it fails at least four of the five measures. The design lets MSCI separate ordinary firms with large cash balances from those built around holding assets such as bitcoin.

Strategy and Metaplanet lead the list of affected firms

Strategy holds 840,447 BTC, worth about $53.18 billion, which makes it the largest corporate bitcoin holder. Metaplanet, listed in Tokyo, holds roughly 43,000 BTC valued above $2 billion. Both companies fund their bitcoin purchases through share sales and debt, which places most of their balance sheets in non-operating assets. That structure is exactly what the MSCI screen is built to detect. Yellow Cake, which stockpiles physical uranium, falls into the same category despite holding no cryptocurrency.

Removal could force up to $2 billion in outflows

Analysts estimate that removal could trigger up to $2 billion in forced passive outflows. Funds that track MSCI benchmarks would have to sell shares in the affected firms once the index drops them. That selling would be mechanical, not a judgment on the companies, because index funds must match their benchmark. MSCI is collecting feedback through 30 September 2026, and any changes would take effect no earlier than the November 2026 index review.

Bitcoin trades below $63,000 as the review nears

Bitcoin traded at $62,654 at the time of publication, down 1.8% over the past 24 hours and 3.8% over the past week (CoinPaprika, 14 August 2026). The price sits about 50% below its 6 October 2025 record high of $126,173. A lower bitcoin price reduces the reported value of the treasury holdings that the proposal targets, though it does not change how the screen classifies the firms.

MSCI set a consultation timeline running through November

MSCI plans to publish its final methodology on 16 October 2026, and deletion decisions would follow at the November index review. The current proposal revives an effort from October 2025, when MSCI named 39 crypto-holding companies for possible exclusion. That earlier plan was deferred after pushback from the industry. The new consultation narrows the test to the operating-asset framework, which gives affected firms a defined set of ratios to contest.