S&P Dow Jones Indices will remove Nike and Simon Property Group from the S&P 100 on September 21, 2026, as part of the index provider’s quarterly rebalance. Both companies keep their places in the broader S&P 500. Nike had held a seat among the largest, options-listed members of the US market for nearly 18 years.
The mechanical effect is modest. The signal is not. Every company taking a vacated seat comes from the information technology sector, and the two retail-facing names leaving are exiting for very different reasons: one because it shrank, and one because everything around it grew faster.
In short
- Effective September 21, 2026, Nike, Simon Property Group, Honeywell Aerospace and Colgate-Palmolive leave the S&P 100. All four remain in the S&P 500.
- Nike’s market value has fallen roughly 78% from a peak near $264 billion in November 2021 to about $57 billion, including a decline of about 36% in 2026 alone.
- Simon Property Group is the anomaly: it is being removed while carrying a larger market value than Nike and while raising its full-year funds-from-operations guidance.
- All four replacements are technology names: Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks and SanDisk, tilting the index further toward chips, cloud hardware and cybersecurity.
- Analysts read the change as symbolic rather than operationally damaging, but it lands while Nike absorbs a tariff bill it revised upward during fiscal 2026.
What S&P Dow Jones Indices actually announced
The index provider said the changes are intended to ensure that each index is more representative of its market capitalization range. That phrasing matters, because it frames the decision as a relative measurement rather than a judgment on any single company’s health. The S&P 100 is a subset of the S&P 500, drawn from its largest members that also have listed options, with sector balance taken into account.
The announcement was reported on September 8, 2026, with the changes taking effect at the open on September 21. Retail Dive and Fortune both carried the detail, and the index provider’s own rebalance notice set out the full slate of additions and deletions.
The full list of additions and deletions
Four companies leave and four arrive. The sector asymmetry is the story: the outbound group spans consumer discretionary, real estate, industrials and consumer staples, while the inbound group is drawn entirely from information technology.
| Company | Action | Sector |
|---|---|---|
| Nike | Removed | Consumer discretionary |
| Simon Property Group | Removed | Real estate |
| Honeywell Aerospace | Removed | Industrials |
| Colgate-Palmolive | Removed | Consumer staples |
| Dell Technologies | Added | Information technology |
| Palo Alto Networks | Added | Information technology |
| Arista Networks | Added | Information technology |
| SanDisk | Added | Information technology |
How the S&P 100 picks its members
The selection rules explain most of what happened here. The S&P 100 is not simply the hundred biggest companies in America. It is drawn from the S&P 500, generally selecting the largest members that also have listed options, and sector balance is an explicit consideration in the process.
The index is capitalization-weighted, meaning constituents are sized according to the total market value of their outstanding shares. Membership is reviewed on a quarterly cycle, which is why announcements of this kind arrive at predictable intervals rather than in response to any single event.
Two consequences follow. First, a company can be removed without any deterioration in its own business if the companies below it in the ranking grow faster. Second, because sector balance is weighed, a cluster of removals can concentrate in one part of the economy while a cluster of additions concentrates in another, which is precisely the pattern in the September 2026 slate.
Why the effective date matters
Index changes are announced ahead of the date they take effect so that funds tracking the index can trade into the new weights in an orderly way. Passive money that tracks the S&P 100 specifically must sell the departing names and buy the arrivals around September 21. Because the S&P 100 is far less widely tracked than the S&P 500, that flow is small relative to Nike’s daily trading volume.
The more visible consequence sits in the options market. The S&P 100 underlies the OEX options contract, so the constituent list feeds a specific derivatives complex rather than the broad passive-fund ecosystem that the S&P 500 supports. Neither company is being removed from the S&P 500, which is where the overwhelming majority of index-tracking assets sit.
Why Nike lost its seat after nearly 18 years
Nike’s removal is the one that reflects company-specific deterioration. The company joined the S&P 100 in the late 2000s and held its place through a decade in which it was one of the most reliably compounding consumer names in the US market. The reversal since late 2021 has been severe enough to erase that standing.
The market capitalization arithmetic
Nike’s market value peaked at about $264 billion in November 2021, according to figures cited by Fortune. It now sits near $57 billion. That is a decline of roughly 78%, or more than $200 billion of equity value, and about 36 percentage points of it came in 2026 alone.
A company does not need to fail to lose an index seat of this kind. It only needs to fall out of the top 100 by size while other companies grow into the range. Nike did both at once: it contracted sharply in absolute terms during a period when large technology names were expanding.
What the fiscal 2026 numbers show
Nike reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $46.4 billion, down 2% on a currency-neutral basis. The channel split is where the pressure is visible. Nike Direct, the company’s owned digital and retail business, fell 6% to $17.7 billion, while wholesale revenue rose 6% to $27.5 billion.
That inversion is notable because the direct-to-consumer channel was the strategic centerpiece of the previous decade. The company has been rebuilding wholesale relationships under chief executive Elliott Hill, and the fiscal 2026 mix suggests that shift is landing in the reported numbers. Fourth-quarter revenue came in at $10.97 billion with adjusted earnings per share of $0.20.
| Channel | Fiscal 2026 revenue | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Nike Direct | $17.7 billion | Down 6% |
| Wholesale | $27.5 billion | Up 6% |
| Total reported | $46.4 billion | Down 2% currency-neutral |
The China problem underneath the index story
Greater China sales fell 17% in the fourth quarter, extending a run of eight consecutive quarters of decline in the region. That is the single most persistent line item in the Nike story, and it is the one least responsive to the wholesale reset happening in North America. Local competitors have taken share in performance categories that Nike once dominated.
Brand perception has moved with it. Wells Fargo research cited in the rebalance coverage found that Nike’s brand mentions on social media and elsewhere fell 10% in the second quarter, placing it among the largest laggards in its coverage. The pattern of an incumbent brand ceding cultural ground while rebuilding its wholesale base echoes the operating logic we examined in Walmart’s playbook reshaping Nike and Kohl’s.
The turnaround timeline behind the index exit
The index removal is best read as the closing marker on a strategic cycle that began years earlier. Understanding why Nike fell out of the top 100 requires looking at what the company chose to do with its distribution, and what it has spent the past two years undoing.
The direct-to-consumer pivot and its reversal
Through the late 2010s and into the early 2020s, Nike moved deliberately toward selling more of its product itself. The logic was standard for the period: owned channels capture full retail margin, generate first-party data, and give the brand control over presentation and pricing. Wholesale accounts were rationalized in service of that goal.
The fiscal 2026 results show the cost of that trade. Nike Direct fell 6% to $17.7 billion while wholesale grew 6% to $27.5 billion, an inversion of the trend the strategy was designed to produce. Shelf space surrendered to competitors during the rationalization did not stay empty, and reclaiming it has proved slower and more expensive than vacating it.
This is the pattern that matters for other brands weighing the same move. Distribution is easier to withdraw from than to re-enter, because the accounts that lost allocation filled the gap with rivals who now have their own claim on that space.
What Elliott Hill changed
Under chief executive Elliott Hill, the company has publicly described fiscal 2026 as a year of decisive action to strengthen its foundation and reposition the business for long-term growth. In practice that has meant rebuilding wholesale relationships, resetting inventory, and narrowing focus toward performance product categories.
Hill noted in results commentary that while the company continues to face top-line headwinds, it is encouraged by progress in performance product. That framing concedes the revenue problem while pointing at the category where the recovery is expected to originate. The wholesale growth rate suggests the distribution half of the plan is working faster than the demand half.
The unresolved question is timing. A brand turnaround of this scale is usually measured in three to five years, and the index removal arrives roughly two years into the effort, at the point where investor patience is typically thinnest.
Why Simon Property Group’s removal is the stranger case
Simon Property Group is being dropped from the S&P 100 while performing well. The largest owner of shopping malls in the United States holds interests in roughly 230 properties across North America, Asia and Europe, and its recent operating disclosures point upward rather than down.
Second-quarter revenue rose 19.3%, occupancy stood at 96%, and management raised full-year 2026 funds-from-operations guidance to a range of $13.20–$13.30 per share. The balance sheet carries net debt to EBITDA below 5.0 times with about $1.02 billion in cash, and the third-quarter dividend was lifted 4.7% year on year to $2.25 per share. Bank of America analysts noted the company’s strong performance in the first half of the year.
The share price reflects that. Simon traded around $220 in early September, up roughly 9.7% for the year to date and about 10.8% over three months. Its market value of roughly $66 billion is larger than Nike’s.
A larger company removed alongside a smaller one
That last point deserves emphasis, because it exposes how the index actually works. Simon carries a bigger market capitalization than Nike and is still leaving the same index on the same day. Removal from the S&P 100 is not a ranking of the departing companies against each other; it is a ranking of each against the companies growing into the top 100.
Sector balance is also a stated consideration in the selection methodology, which means a real estate investment trust and a footwear brand can be displaced by the same wave of technology growth without either having done anything wrong operationally. Nick Egelanian, president of retail consultancy SiteWorks, framed the shift as reflecting other companies growing rapidly rather than anything specific to Nike or Simon.
For Simon specifically, analysts have long viewed inclusion in the S&P 100 as somewhat surprising in the first place. The company had promoted its S&P 100 status on its investor website, which makes the removal a marketing inconvenience more than a financial one. The durability of well-located mall assets is a theme we have covered in our analysis of mall anchor tenants in the post-mall era.
What the mall REIT numbers actually say
Occupancy of 96% across roughly 230 properties is a figure that would have been difficult to credit during the widely forecast retail apocalypse of the late 2010s. The premium end of the mall sector consolidated rather than collapsed, with the strongest centers absorbing tenants displaced from weaker ones.
The financial profile supports that reading. Net debt to EBITDA below 5.0 times is conservative for a property company, and a dividend raised 4.7% year on year signals management confidence in the durability of cash flow rather than a defensive posture.
None of this argues that mall real estate is a growth sector in the way cloud infrastructure is. It argues something narrower and more useful: that Simon’s exit from the S&P 100 carries no information about its operating performance, and that treating the two as connected would be a straightforward analytical error.
What the index change does and does not do
It is worth separating the mechanical consequences from the reputational ones, because commentary around index changes routinely conflates them.
What it does: it forces a modest, dated rebalancing among funds and products that track the S&P 100 specifically, and it changes the constituent set underlying OEX options. It also removes a line that both companies could previously cite in investor materials.
What it does not do: it does not affect S&P 500 membership, index-fund ownership through S&P 500 vehicles, credit ratings, debt covenants, or any operating metric. It does not change a single unit of inventory, lease or wholesale order.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, put the balance plainly, describing the removals as meaningful but symbolic rather than problematic. He also noted that Nike’s exit underlines the company’s broader problems as it attempts a recovery. Both halves of that assessment are load-bearing: the index move is not itself damaging, and it is still evidence of damage already done.
How tariffs shaped Nike’s margin story
The index headline arrives on top of a trade-cost story that has run through Nike’s entire fiscal 2026. The company initially guided to roughly $1 billion of tariff cost with an approximate 75 basis point drag on gross margin. It later revised that to about $1.5 billion and a headwind of approximately 120 basis points, citing increased reciprocal tariff rates on certain countries.
That revision is a useful marker for the wider apparel and footwear sector, because Nike’s sourcing footprint is diversified across Vietnam, Indonesia and China and is therefore exposed to several concurrent tariff programs at once. A single-country exemption does little when duties stack across the whole sourcing base.
The refund line that complicates the comparison
Nike also disclosed an expected tariff refund of about $986 million alongside its fourth-quarter results in June 2026. Refunds of this kind flow from the unwinding of tariff programs later found to be improperly imposed, and they land as one-time items rather than as structural margin relief.
Readers comparing retailers on tariff exposure should treat headline refund figures with care, because the cash arrives in a different period than the cost it offsets. We traced the same accounting distortion in Dillard’s $37.2 million tariff refund, where a one-time credit lifted reported profit well above the underlying operating trend.
How Nike’s tariff bill compares across the sector
Nike’s $1.5 billion estimate is among the largest absolute tariff figures disclosed by a consumer brand in this cycle, though its scale means the percentage drag is comparable to smaller peers. Athletic apparel companies have generally guided to tariff costs in the hundreds of millions, which is proportionally similar against much smaller revenue bases. The pattern is visible in the guidance issued around Lululemon’s $380 million tariff bill.
What replaces retail in the index
The four arriving companies are Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks and SanDisk. Their businesses cluster around enterprise hardware, network security, cloud networking and storage, which is to say around the physical and security infrastructure of the artificial intelligence buildout.
This is the second-order effect of the AI capital cycle showing up in index composition. Capital expenditure by hyperscale data center operators flows into the revenue lines of the companies that supply them, those revenues support higher valuations, and those valuations eventually displace older constituents in size-ranked indices.
| Measure | Nike | Simon Property Group |
|---|---|---|
| Approximate market value, early September 2026 | About $57 billion | About $66 billion |
| Peak market value cited | $264 billion (November 2021) | Not cited in rebalance coverage |
| Share price move in 2026 to date | Down about 36% | Up about 9.7% |
| Latest reported operating trend | FY2026 revenue $46.4bn, down 2% currency-neutral | Q2 revenue up 19.3%, occupancy 96% |
| Guidance direction | Tariff headwind revised upward during FY2026 | FY2026 FFO guidance raised to $13.20–$13.30 |
| Reason for removal | Absolute contraction in market value | Relative displacement by faster-growing sectors |
Retail’s remaining representation
Consumer-facing companies still hold meaningful positions in the S&P 100 through the largest general merchants and food retailers, whose scale has held up through the same period. What has thinned is the representation of specialist brands and property owners, the layer of retail that sits between the mass merchants and the long tail.
That is the more durable observation from this rebalance. Retail is not disappearing from the largest-cap tier of the US market. The category of retail that commands a top-100 valuation is narrowing to those with the broadest assortment and the most defensible logistics.
What this means for retail operators and suppliers
For most operators, the direct answer is that it means nothing. An index constituent list does not alter a supplier’s terms, a landlord’s leasing pipeline or a brand’s wholesale allocations.
The indirect effects are real but slower. A lower market capitalization raises the cost of equity-funded expansion and makes acquisitions harder to finance with stock. It also changes the analyst coverage mix and the composition of the shareholder base, which over time shapes how much patience a management team is given for a multi-year turnaround.
For wholesale partners
Nike’s rebuilt wholesale channel is growing at 6% while its own direct channel contracts. Retail buyers negotiating 2027 allocations are dealing with a supplier that needs the wholesale channel more than it did three years ago, which typically improves terms for the accounts that stayed through the direct-to-consumer pivot.
For apparel and footwear importers
The tariff arithmetic in Nike’s guidance is the more actionable number for the sector than the index change. When the largest player in a category raises its own tariff cost estimate by 50% mid-year, it is describing a duty environment that smaller importers face without the same hedging capacity. That environment continues to shift, as we reported when USTR missed its textile quota target and apparel importers kept paying the higher rate.
How to read an index exit as a retail signal
Index changes attract disproportionate coverage because they are clean, dated and easy to write about. They are also among the most frequently over-interpreted events in market reporting. A short framework helps separate the signal from the noise.
Three questions worth asking
First, did the company shrink, or did others grow? Nike shrank by 78% from its peak, so its removal reflects genuine value destruction. Simon grew modestly while others grew faster, so its removal reflects nothing about its own trajectory. The same announcement carries opposite meanings for the two names.
Second, does the index in question control meaningful passive flow? The S&P 500 does. The S&P 100 does not, in comparable terms. An exit from a narrow index generates headlines far out of proportion to the capital it actually moves.
Third, is the removal news, or is it confirmation? Index rebalances are backward-looking by construction, because they respond to market capitalizations that have already changed. By the time a company is removed, the information that caused the removal is months or years old and fully reflected in the share price.
Where the real signal sits
The forward-looking information in this announcement is not about Nike at all. It is in the composition of the replacements. Four consecutive additions from a single sector describe a capital cycle concentrated enough to reshape the top of the US market within a few quarters.
For retail operators, that concentration has a practical consequence. Capital allocated to AI infrastructure is capital not allocated to consumer businesses, which raises the return threshold that a retail expansion plan must clear to attract funding. That effect is slower and less visible than an index change, and considerably more consequential.
What to watch next
Two dates frame the next month. The index change takes effect on September 21, 2026, which will produce a brief window of rebalancing flow and a round of headlines but little lasting price impact on its own.
The date that carries information is October 1, 2026, when Nike is scheduled to report first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, with a conference call to follow. That report will show whether the wholesale recovery is broadening, whether Greater China has found a floor after eight quarters of decline, and whether the tariff estimate holds at $1.5 billion. Details are published on the company’s investor relations site.
For Simon Property Group, the relevant test is whether the raised funds-from-operations guidance survives the holiday leasing season. Occupancy at 96% leaves limited room for further gains, so growth from here depends on releasing spreads rather than filling vacancy.
The signal worth tracking
The question this rebalance raises is not whether Nike recovers. It is whether any specialist consumer brand can rebuild a top-100 valuation in a market where index seats are being absorbed by infrastructure suppliers to the AI buildout. That is a multi-year question, and September 21 is only a marker on the way to answering it.
Frequently asked questions
When exactly are Nike and Simon Property Group removed from the S&P 100?
The removals take effect on September 21, 2026. S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the quarterly rebalance in early September, and the changes were reported on September 8, 2026.
Is Nike also being removed from the S&P 500?
No. Nike remains a member of the S&P 500, as does Simon Property Group. Only the S&P 100 membership changes, and that index is a smaller subset of the S&P 500 covering its largest options-listed members.
How much has Nike’s market value fallen?
Nike’s market capitalization peaked at about $264 billion in November 2021 and stands near $57 billion in early September 2026, a decline of roughly 78%. About 36 percentage points of that decline occurred during 2026.
Why was Simon Property Group removed if its results are improving?
Removal from the S&P 100 is relative rather than absolute. Simon was displaced by faster-growing technology companies moving into the top 100 by market capitalization, and sector balance is a stated consideration in the index methodology. Simon raised its 2026 funds-from-operations guidance to $13.20–$13.30 per share and reported 96% occupancy.
Which companies are joining the S&P 100?
Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks and SanDisk. All four come from the information technology sector, which tilts the index further toward chips, cloud hardware and cybersecurity.
Does the removal force large amounts of forced selling in Nike shares?
Not materially. The S&P 100 is tracked by far less passive capital than the S&P 500, and Nike is staying in the S&P 500. The rebalancing flow around September 21 is small relative to Nike’s normal daily trading volume.
What is Nike’s tariff exposure in fiscal 2026?
Nike raised its estimated tariff cost to about $1.5 billion with a gross margin headwind of approximately 120 basis points, up from an earlier estimate of roughly $1 billion and about 75 basis points. It separately disclosed an expected tariff refund of about $986 million.
When does Nike next report earnings?
Nike is scheduled to report first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on October 1, 2026, with a conference call the same afternoon. That report is the next substantive test of the wholesale recovery and the Greater China trend.
Do index removals usually predict further share price declines?
Not reliably. Analysts covering this rebalance described the removals as symbolic rather than problematic, and index changes generally follow price moves rather than lead them. The information value sits in what the removal confirms about past performance, not in what it forecasts.