Strategy Stock Soars—But Its Fight to Stay in Major Indexes Rages On

Another day, another index shuffle—and another stock scrambling to prove its worth. Welcome to the high-stakes game of financial musical chairs, where billions in passive flows hinge on a committee's whim.

The Index Inclusion Tango

Getting a boost is one thing. Keeping your seat at the table is a whole other battle. Funds benchmarked to major indexes don't just buy a stock—they buy a narrative of stability and growth. Lose that story, and you're out. The pressure to perform isn't quarterly anymore; it's constant, algorithmic, and brutally efficient.

Passive Aggressive Flows

Index inclusion isn't a reward—it's a lifecycle. First comes the pop from anticipated buying. Then comes the grind of maintaining metrics under the microscope of every quant and ESG scorecard on the planet. One missed projection, one governance hiccup, and the very machines that buoyed you start selling on autopilot. Talk about a captive audience.

The real kicker? This whole rigmarole often has less to do with a company's actual engine and more to do with how well it fits into a pre-packaged, marketable theme. Because nothing says 'sound investment' like a stock's fate being decided by whether it checks the right boxes on a consultant's spreadsheet.

Key Takeaways

• Strategy, the public company with a massive stockpile of bitcoin, won't be getting the boot from major indexes for now.
• MSCI on Tuesday evening said it intends to start a broader review of the matter. In the meanwhile, the stock is rising.

Strategy shareholders haven't caught many breaks lately. They did this week.

Index provider MSCI late Tuesday said it would not boot publicly traded companies with big holdings of digital assets such as Bitcoin from its indexes—for now. Fans of Strategy (MSTR), the company made famous for stockpiling cryptocurrency, applauded the decision: Its stock was recently up about 4%, a bit off earlier highs.

The news removed, or at least delayed, an overhang from Strategy's shares. MSCI last fall proposed removing digital asset treasury companies, or DATCOs, from its indexes following a proliferation of firms of that ilk, saying they resemble investment funds, which aren't eligible for inclusion. That spooked investors, as analysts estimated the MOVE could spur other index providers to follow suit and cost the company billions in outflows.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

MSCI's decision removes the near-term risk that was hanging over Strategy shares, but it doesn't mean the company is in the clear.

Though Strategy will live another day on MSCI indexes, its place is not guaranteed over the longer term. Strategy executive chairman and bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor took to social media to spread the word of MSCI's decision, though he stopped short of celebrating: "$MSTR will remain in MSCI indexes," he said on the X platform.

The news offered some relief to shareholders who saw the stock battered throughout the second half of 2025. Still, it isn't registering as a major win today—because it may not be. MSCI said it WOULD to start a "broader review" of DATCOs and a final decision on their index eligibility required "further research."

Related Education

Saylor, for his part, has been revamping his pitch about what the company brings to the table, though remaining aligned with its argument that excluding DATCOs from indexes on the notion that they are not operating companies is based on flawed reasoning.

"Strategy is not an investment fund and it does not passively hold bitcoin," the company wrote in December. "Strategy is an operating business that actively uses the bitcoin it holds to create returns for shareholders."

Strategy, which according to Visible Alpha has a market cap of about $48 billion, is a member of the Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq 100 indexes, among others.