MSCI has completed its review and will implement updated eligibility standards for the Global Investable Market Indexes, classifying certain non-operating companies as ineligible.
The decision, announced following a consultation process, creates a pathway that could remove Strategy—the largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin—along with other firms that maintain substantial digital asset treasuries.
The revised methodology, to be applied during the November 2026 Index Review and taking effect after the close of trading on November 30, expands existing exclusions that already bar investment funds, business development companies, and similar passive vehicles.
Under the new approach, MSCI will first apply a core screen to determine whether an issuer maintains substantial operating assets.
Companies that do not meet this threshold then face a secondary assessment based on five financial ratios that are not industry-specific.
A security becomes ineligible if it fails at least four of those five tests.To limit excessive turnover, MSCI is introducing buffers.
Prospective constituents will be barred from addition if they fail the ineligibility criteria in either of their two most recent annual reporting periods.
Existing index members, however, will face removal only if they fail the screen across both of those periods.
The firm may also consider the most recent interim financial statements when available.
Detailed thresholds appear in an appendix to the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes methodology.
These changes replace interim measures introduced in October 2025 that had restricted companies whose digital asset holdings equaled or exceeded half of total assets.
Those temporary steps, which included freezes on share counts and inclusion factors plus deferred additions and size-segment adjustments, will end with the November review.
Going forward, all such companies will be evaluated under the broader non-operating framework rather than a crypto-specific threshold.
Earlier simulations conducted by MSCI using May 2026 data had identified Strategy, the Japanese bitcoin-focused firm Metaplanet, and the uranium investment vehicle Yellow Cake as candidates for deletion under the proposed criteria.
Ethereum treasury company SharpLink and several other digital asset holders were flagged for potential watchlist status.
MSCI plans to publish the definitive list of affected current constituents on November 11 as part of the index review announcement.
Until that date, any removals remain prospective.
The framework follows an earlier, narrower proposal aimed specifically at digital asset treasury companies that MSCI set aside in January 2026 after investor feedback.
That episode prompted a wider consultation on non-operating businesses, which closed at the end of September.
Strategy’s leadership, including Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le, had previously described related proposals as discriminatory toward firms holding digital assets as a core treasury strategy.
In a September letter, the company argued that the approach would leave its operations largely unaffected while damaging MSCI’s standing as a neutral index provider.
Analysts have noted that exclusion could compel passive funds tracking MSCI benchmarks to sell shares.
One earlier estimate from JPMorgan pointed to roughly $2.8 billion in potential selling pressure on Strategy alone, given the volume of index-linked holdings.
While the new rules do not guarantee immediate removal—existing constituents benefit from the two-period buffer—they formalize quantitative tests that place crypto-centric balance sheets under sustained scrutiny. The outcome will be clearer once MSCI releases its November list, but the finalized standards already signal tighter boundaries between operating companies and asset-holding vehicles in major equity benchmarks.