SAYLOR'S CHART PUTS STRATEGY SECOND ONLY TO BERKSHIRE — THE 10.75x IS RESERVE ASSETS OVER DEBT ALONE — PUT THE $14.79 BILLION OF PREFERRED BACK AND IT IS 3.4x

Strategy posted a chart today. It ranks financial companies in the S&P 500 by something it calls Total Reserve Capital, and Strategy comes second, behind Berkshire Hathaway and ahead of JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman and the rest, most of whom show up below zero. Strategy's bar reads $66 billion. The ratio underneath reads 10.75 times.

The chart defines the term in its own subtitle: reserve assets minus senior claims.

So we ran it. Strategy holds 845,050 coins. At the price our tracker used on August 30 that is $65.8 billion, plus $6.79 billion of cash, for $72.55 billion of reserve assets. Divide by the $6.75 billion of debt and you get 10.74. Subtract the debt and you get $65.8 billion. Both land on the chart. That is their arithmetic, recovered from the outside.

Which tells you the $14.79 billion of preferred stock is not in it. Preferred sits ahead of common. It is a senior claim in any ordinary use of those words. Put it back and the ratio is 3.4 times and the number is $51 billion, not $66 billion.

The fine print does say senior claims are counted “within the reserve-only perimeter.” So this is a definition, not a hidden ball. They told you where the fence is. They drew it with the preferred standing outside.

Here is the part worth saying out loud. Strategy is still second on that chart with the preferred added back in. The company does not need the smaller denominator to win the argument. And the coins do not move when the fence does. Capitalist.