Nike’s long slide on Wall Street has cost it a place in one major stock index, and analysts say a second, more symbolic demotion could follow. The sportswear giant was removed from the S&P 100, a benchmark of the 100 largest US companies, effective before trading opened on September 21. Now attention has turned to whether Nike can keep its seat on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to Reuters.

A stock that has gone nowhere for over a decade

Nike shares were trading around $36 as of September 17, according to Reuters, down roughly 78 to 80% from the all-time high the stock hit in November 2021. That decline has erased an estimated $200 billion in market capitalisation, according to Yahoo Finance and Fortune.

The scale of the underperformance becomes clearer when measured against the broader market. Nike joined the Dow in 2013, and its shares have gained only about 5% since then. The S&P 500, by contrast, has more than quadrupled over the same period, Reuters and the Globe and Mail reported.

That gap has made Nike, at 0.4%, the lowest-weighted of the Dow’s 30 components, a title it inherited after Alphabet replaced Verizon Communications in the index in June 2026. The Dow is a price-weighted index rather than one weighted by market capitalisation, meaning a stock’s low share price, not just its total market value, can push it toward the bottom of the ranking.

A pattern of removing the weakest link

History is not encouraging for Nike. According to Reuters, at least five of the last ten changes to the Dow’s lineup have involved removing whichever stock held the lowest weighting at the time, including the 2024 removals of Intel and Walgreens. The Dow’s Averages Committee, which oversees the index alongside S&P Dow Jones Indices, does not announce changes on a fixed schedule, leaving the timing of any decision on Nike uncertain.

“We have to get back to growth in China.” — Elliott Hill, Nike CEO

Nike’s chief executive has pointed to Greater China as the company’s central challenge. Sales in the region fell 17% on a constant-currency basis in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, contributing to overall annual revenue of $46.4 billion, down 2% on a currency-neutral basis, according to Yahoo Finance. Nike declined to comment on the Dow speculation when approached by Reuters.

What the S&P 100 exit means

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced on September 4 that Nike would be dropped from the S&P 100, with the change taking effect on September 21 alongside the removal of Honeywell Aerospace, Simon Property Group and Colgate-Palmolive. Their replacements, Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks and Sandisk, are among the technology firms increasingly favoured by index compilers over legacy consumer and industrial names.

For funds that track the S&P 100, the reshuffling is already complete. Whether the Dow follows with its own change remains an open question, one that analysts including Josh Bischoff of TimesSquare Capital Management and Shay Boloor of Futurum Equities have flagged as increasingly plausible given Nike’s persistent underperformance.

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