NEW YORK, Jan 9, 2026, 14:32 EST — Regular session
- Strategy shares slip about 5% as bitcoin nudges lower
- Clear Street cuts its price target to $268, sticks with “buy”
- Investors focus on MSCI conclusions due Jan. 15, with early-February earnings also in view
Strategy Inc shares slid about 5% Friday afternoon, underperforming a rising market after an analyst cut a price target on the bitcoin-linked software company. The stock fell $8.52 to $158.45. Bitcoin eased 0.9% to about $90,217, while the Nasdaq-tracking QQQ ETF was up about 1.1%.
Strategy’s stock can swing wildly because the company has hitched its balance sheet to bitcoin. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, calls itself a bitcoin treasury company — it holds bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset and has financed purchases through capital markets alongside its software business. 1
Clear Street analyst Brian Dobson on Friday cut his price target on Strategy to $268 from $443, while sticking with a buy rating, after dialing back his bitcoin-price and treasury-yield assumptions. He wrote the stock still offers “a differentiated” route to leveraged bitcoin exposure on a per-share basis even after dilution, and said MSCI’s recent stance on crypto treasury firms lowered the risk of forced selling by index funds. 2
The MSCI debate has hung over the stock. “It removes a material near-term technical risk,” said Owen Lau, an analyst at Clear Street, after MSCI shelved — for now — a proposal to exclude “digital asset treasury companies,” firms that hold crypto tokens on their balance sheets, from major indexes. Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said he suspected the exclusion was “postponed until later in the year” as MSCI considers broader rules. 3
A filing earlier this week underscored why investors often trade Strategy like a bitcoin proxy. In an 8-K dated Jan. 5, Strategy said it bought 1,286 bitcoin between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4 for about $116.3 million, lifting holdings to 673,783 bitcoins as of Jan. 4. The company said it funded the purchases with proceeds from its at-the-market, or ATM, share-sale program — a method for selling stock into the open market. 4
MSCI’s consultation on digital-asset treasury companies is due to wrap up with final conclusions on Jan. 15, according to an MSCI announcement. Any changes that follow would be taken up in the February 2026 index review. For Strategy, the rulebook matters: benchmark inclusion can drive passive-fund buying and selling, and the stock’s volatility can magnify those flows. 5
Other crypto-linked names were mixed on Friday. Coinbase slid about 1.8%, Marathon Digital was down 1.7% and Riot Platforms added 1.5%.
The bear case isn’t hard to map out. If bitcoin sells off harder, Strategy’s reported results take a hit, and it gets tougher to raise fresh money without heavy dilution. And if index rules tighten, incremental demand from passive investors could still be capped.
MSCI’s next call is due Jan. 15, and Strategy is expected to report quarterly results in early February. Nasdaq data points to Feb. 4 as the next earnings date. 6
