Say No To Trading
Public Markets Investor, Opportunistic Buying & Cost-Basis Management
MSCI is a very high-quality, founder-led business, but its 10% post-earnings drop warrants only a small buy as its extreme 2019-Covid multiple keeps normalizing. The business has done well, and Henry Fernandez bought about $2.25M of shares at roughly today's price. MSCI may not stay the dominant benchmark for decades, since fund managers can design their own; its main edge was being first to gain traction with international benchmarks. x.com x.comÂ
MSCI insiders keep buying, a strong signal since insiders sell for many reasons but buy for only one. A director bought about another $1M of stock, bringing total insider purchases in 2026 near $10M. x.comÂ
MSCI trades at one of its lowest valuations ever, even though its fundamentals keep compounding while the stock has been flat for years. Its index business, which takes a percentage of AUM from ETFs that track its lists, is capital light, high margin and recurring, with high switching costs; so much of Wall Street runs on MSCI indices that they are nearly impossible to rip out. x.comÂ
Costco, Apple, Intuitive Surgical, Alphabet and MSCI are amazing companies priced too high for their growth. Costco trades at 46x earnings on high-single-digit growth, Apple at 32x forward on low-double-digit EPS growth, and Intuitive Surgical at 38x forward on low-teens growth. Alphabet, the most attractive, is 33x operating income excluding investment gains. MSCI is 34x trailing on low-double-digit growth; S&P Global is better, cheaper and extremely high quality with similar growth. x.com … Show more
MSCI's stock is pressing its roughly $650 2021 high after years of higher lows, a long base that sets up a durable uptrend. Each pullback since 2022 has stopped higher, signaling sellers are running out. A decisive breakout on strong volume would confirm the business story. MSCI collects a fee as passive funds grew from 1% of US equity fund assets in 1993 to over 50% in 2024, index retention has stayed above 93% for 16 quarters, and it has grown from a $1 billion index firm into four businesses. … Show more
Financial tollbooth businesses are a great place to invest because they are embedded in the system, take a cut whenever money moves or decisions are made, and need little capital. S&P Global and Moody's, tied to credit markets, are hard to replace; FICO is strong but more exposed to pricing backlash; CME gains when volatility lifts volumes; LSEG fits too. MSCI is the favorite, with fees spread across trillions tied to benchmarks for durable pricing power, and insider buying near current prices. … Show more
Strategy could face billions in forced selling if MSCI removes it from its indexes. MSCI is considering exclusion, with its final list due November 11; if it goes through, things could get really ugly for the stock. x.comÂ
MSCI is a long-term AI winner because AI is a huge tailwind for companies like it. The market is focused on direct AI winners now, but over the long term many more beneficiaries like MSCI will emerge. x.comÂ
The loss of forced ETF buying increases the likelihood Strategy will trade at a discount to the value of its bitcoin holdings. WatcherGuru reports MSCI plans to remove Strategy from its indexes. x.com x.comÂ
SpaceX insiders showed strong confidence by not dumping when $100B of shares became eligible to sell, and the stock rose instead. Early holders could have sold with the stock still 50% below its highs but did not; Musk's 42% stake stays locked until 2027 and shares unlock in stages. Index funds also need to buy more as SpaceX's Nasdaq-100 weight rises from about 1% to over 3.5%. x.comÂ
Up to $13.4B of green-shoe shares that underwriters can sell over the next 30 days is a wrinkle against SpaceX's index-driven buying. Russell confirmed SpaceX joins its indexes on June 26, which should drive nearly $3B of passive inflows plus buying from closet indexers, with MSCI and Nasdaq-100 additions to follow. The listing also put another player in the AI capex race: SpaceX says it will need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to reach its goals. x.comÂ
