Bitcoin Magazine
Amundi Boosts Strategy (MSTR) Stake 44% to $291 Million as Shares Slide
Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, raised its stake in Strategy (MSTR) by about 44% in the third quarter, a Form 13F filed Nov. 6 shows, lifting the position to 1,903,725 shares worth $291.4 million at Sept. 30 prices.
That is up 579,672 shares from the 1,324,053 Amundi reported at June 30, when the same holding was valued at about $115.1 million. The Paris-based firm managed €2.579 trillion in assets at the end of September, up 11% year over year, and described itself as Europe’s leading asset manager.
The filing lands as MSTR has given back much of its third-quarter run. Strategy shares closed at $153.09 on Sept. 30 and near $126 on Monday, an 18% drop that would put Amundi’s disclosed stake near $239 million at the latest close, Yahoo Finance data show.
A 13F is a snapshot, not a trading diary. Amundi filed a combination report that folds in 17 other managers across its group, so the Strategy line can include client, fund and discretionary positions rather than a single proprietary bet, and the firm may have changed the holding since Sept. 30.
Strategy keeps buying while the stock slides
Strategy itself kept stacking. The company bought another 1,036 bitcoin last week for $81.9 million at an average of $79,012, a Monday 8-K filing and company release show, lifting its treasury to 850,364 BTC acquired for $64.16 billion at an average of $75,456.
That average cost now sits above the spot bitcoin price, leaving the stack underwater on paper even after the firm added 811 bitcoin the prior week. Strategy’s public ledger still ranks it as the largest corporate bitcoin holder, with the stack equal to roughly 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap.
MSTR roughly doubled during the third quarter itself. The June 30 13F valued Amundi’s then-smaller stake at an implied $86.93 a share, against the $153.09 Sept. 30 close, so the dollar value of the position rose faster than the share count. Since then the stock has tracked bitcoin’s slide into the mid-$70,000s, wiping out a large share of that mark-to-market gain for anyone still holding the Sept. 30 position.
The timing matters because Strategy funds most of its bitcoin buys by selling new MSTR common under an at-the-market program. A weaker share price raises more dilution for every coin purchased, which is the feedback loop that has defined the stock’s moves this year.
Banks loaded bitcoin proxies in the same quarter
Amundi was not the only large European name adding bitcoin exposure on the quarter. Barclays’ own 13F, also filed Nov. 6, shows 3,942,900 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) worth $186.7 million at Sept. 30, up 48% from 2,658,147 shares three months earlier, SEC records show.
That Barclays line carries the same caveat: a 13F gathers client, managed and trading book positions, not proof the bank put its own capital into bitcoin. Still, the two filings together sketch the same picture of Q3: traditional European managers kept adding exposure to bitcoin proxies even as the spot market cooled into the fall.
The institutional adds sit against a weaker tape since quarter-end. Bitcoin has slipped into the mid-$70,000s, Strategy stock has followed it down, and the value of Amundi’s disclosed MSTR stake has compressed even as the share count on the filing stayed fixed. At Monday’s close the disclosed stake was about $52 million below its Sept. 30 mark.
Whether Amundi kept buying, trimmed, or simply held through October’s slide will not show up until the next 13F. For now the Nov. 6 filing is the record Europe’s biggest asset manager left: nearly 1.9 million Strategy shares, up 44%, at a $291 million quarter-end mark.
This post Amundi Boosts Strategy (MSTR) Stake 44% to $291 Million as Shares Slide first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
