New York, Jan 7, 2026, 16:40 EST — After-hours
- MSCI drops proposal to exclude “digital asset treasury” firms from its equity indexes, launches broader review
- Strategy shares gain after hours even as bitcoin slips
- Recent filing shows fresh bitcoin buying and a large Q4 paper loss tied to crypto prices
Strategy (MSTR.O) was up 2.5% at $161.83 in after-hours trading on Wednesday after MSCI scrapped a plan to exclude digital-asset treasury companies from its indexes. MSCI said it would keep its current approach — covering Strategy, which it lists as a firm whose digital-asset holdings are at least half of total assets — while it launches a broader review; Strategy said the policy would hold for MSCI’s February 2026 index review. Bitcoin fell 2.7% to $90,986, and Strategy’s shares were down about 47.5% last year.
That matters because MSCI’s benchmarks sit under a huge pool of index funds and ETFs. If a stock is dropped, passive money that tracks the index can be forced to sell, regardless of fundamentals.
Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, has become a de facto equity proxy for bitcoin because it holds a large stash of the token on its balance sheet. The setup leaves investors arguing over whether to treat it like an operating software firm or a holding vehicle, especially as crypto price swings wash through reported results. “It removes a material near-term technical risk,” said Owen Lau, an analyst at Clear Street, though Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, said any exclusion may simply be “postponed until later in the year.” Reuters
In a Jan. 5 SEC filing, Strategy said it bought 1,283 bitcoin between Jan. 1 and Jan. 4 for about $116 million, taking holdings to 673,783 coins. The purchases were funded through an at-the-market share sale — a program that lets a company drip new stock into the open market — which raised $116.3 million in net proceeds over the same period, the filing showed. Strategy also flagged a $17.44 billion unrealized loss on digital assets for the quarter ended Dec. 31 and said its U.S. dollar reserve stood at $2.25 billion; the company said those figures had not been audited or reviewed by its independent auditor.
The trade is still simple: bitcoin down usually hurts, bitcoin up usually helps. But the plumbing around the stock — index eligibility, share issuance and accounting — keeps adding new ways for the shares to gap around.
Traders will watch how MSCI frames its broader consultation and whether it leads to tighter tests for companies dominated by non-operating assets. They are also watching Strategy’s funding cadence, since its buying has leaned on tapping markets when the stock has a premium.
But the MSCI pause is not a clean win. If the review ends with these firms treated more like investment funds, index inclusion could be back on the line, and bitcoin volatility would still feed straight into earnings under fair-value accounting.
Strategy is expected to report quarterly results around Feb. 4, according to Nasdaq data. That report is likely to put its bitcoin accounting and funding runway back under a microscope.
