S&P Dow Jones Indices is taking Nike out of the S&P 100 before the open on September 21, 2026. Almost eighteen years in the club. In December 2008 they replaced Cigna. Now they get replaced by another tech name, and they stay in the broader S&P 500 like a guest who still has a key but lost the good table.
The stock closed around $38 last week. From the November 2021 peak that is a collapse of roughly three-quarters, not a bad quarter. I will not dress that up as “the Mulvaney ad did it.” That would be lazy, and I have been yelling at other people for being lazy with numbers.
The long slide is China, a direct-to-consumer bet that punched their own wholesale partners in the mouth, rivals who took the lifestyle lane, and a brand that spent years talking to a room that did not pay the bill. The ads were not the whole income statement. They were the moment I stopped arguing for them at the register.
I liked Nike. That is the annoying part.
In March 2017 they launched the first serious plus-size women’s line. The phrase they kept repeating was “Strong is the keyword for us; size doesn’t matter.” As a sizing policy, fine. As a sports company, it sounded like they had decided fitness was a vibe.
In 2020 they went political. After George Floyd died following a police restraint, they ran “For Once, Don’t Do It” and planted themselves in the Black Lives Matter moment. I never signed up for any “Lives Matter” franchise. Skin color is not the variable I use. Mindset is.
Then they doubled down. April 2023: a paid Instagram partnership with Dylan Mulvaney in Nike Women gear — sports bra, Zenvy leggings — under “Alert the media — I’m entering my workout era.”
That was the last pair I talked myself into.
Bud Light and Jaguar made the same mistake in their own categories. They lectured the people who still opened their wallets. You do not have to share my politics. You do have to remember who buys the product.
This is not about one influencer. It is about a company that spent a decade courting applause instead of customers — and is leaving the S&P 100 for the dull reason indexes actually use: the market cap no longer belongs there.
Did you quit them, or are you still wearing the old pair until the glue gives out?
This is not investment advice. Disclaimer.
