Key Takeaways
- Strategy stock is down 27% in 2026, and the whole loss came after it finished September about where it started the year.
- MSCI’s decision to drop Strategy from its indexes and the cash going into STRC buybacks both make it harder to sell stock at the premium its bitcoin buying needs.
- Coinbase has fallen even further, but Strategy’s index exit and its preferred stock are its own problems.
- At 0.9x book, the stock is cheap against its history, but it looks like dead money until the weekly filings show stock sales buying bitcoin again.
Strategy (MSTR) stock is down 27% in 2026, and all of the loss has come since the end of September. A June crash and a huge third quarter had left it about where it started the year. Then MSCI moved to drop it from its indexes, and the company started spending more on its preferred stock than on bitcoin.
Coinbase (COIN) is down 44% this year, so Strategy isn’t the only crypto stock to slide. But the index exit and the preferred stock are Strategy’s own problems, and both go straight at how it pays for bitcoin.
A June crash, a summer comeback, then MSCI
Bitcoin fell to about $58,700 by June 30. STRC, the preferred stock that raised about $7.5 billion for Strategy through late July, traded in the $70s in late June, far below its $100 stated amount. Then bitcoin recovered, and the stock rose 76% in the third quarter against bitcoin’s 43%.
The slide began when MSCI adopted its screen for nonoperating companies on Oct. 15, and the stock fell nearly 10% the next day. On Oct. 26, Strategy said it bought no bitcoin the week before and spent $204.9 million buying back STRC. Its third-quarter report showed a BTC Yield (its measure of bitcoin per share) of negative 3.7% for the year through Oct. 25, and said CFO Andrew Kang was stepping down. On Nov. 11, MSCI confirmed it will delete Strategy from its indexes at the Nov. 30 close. The stock fell 6.5% the next day, and on Nov. 13 bitcoin dropped below $70,000, under the $75,456 Strategy has paid per coin on average.
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Strategy lost its premium
The software business brings in about $500 million a year, and analysts expect little change through 2028:
So the stock trades on bitcoin, and how Strategy pays for it. It raised $21.23 billion this year, mostly by selling common stock. A share sale only adds bitcoin per share when buyers pay more than the bitcoin behind each share. Management’s own math from May puts that break-even at about 1.22x mNAV (enterprise value over the value of its bitcoin).
That premium is gone. The stock trades at about 0.9x book value, against a five-year average of 3.8x:
Preferred dividends hit $419.6 million in the third quarter, triple a year earlier. In the week to Nov. 8, Strategy sold $283.8 million of new shares. Of that, $188.3 million went to STRC buybacks, and only $81.9 million to bitcoin, and its USD Reserve for dividends and interest was down to $4.77 billion.
MSCI-tracking funds hold about 13 million Strategy shares by the company’s count, or 3.1% of its basic shares, so the forced selling looks manageable. The real cost is losing a steady buyer for the stock Strategy keeps selling. Coinbase, which runs an exchange, faces none of that.
Nov. 30 is the first test
The average Street target is about $233, though Monness cut its target to $100 from $121.03 in November and kept a Hold rating. Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said in the third-quarter release, “We’re at the beginning of the next bitcoin bull market.”
A bitcoin rally would do more for this stock than anything else. But with no premium, each new share Strategy sells shrinks bitcoin per share, and lately more of that money has gone to STRC than to bitcoin. Cheap on book or not, this is dead money until that changes.
The weekly Monday filings after Nov. 30 will show whether stock sales are buying bitcoin again, and the fourth-quarter report should come out in early February. Further out, holders of about $1 billion of Strategy’s $6.7 billion in convertible notes can demand cash starting in September 2027.
So what is Strategy stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
