Nike faces potential Dow Jones removal as Berkshire Hathaway awaits entry

Nike’s spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is looking increasingly precarious. The sportswear giant has posted four consecutive years of negative stock returns, and the whispers about its removal from the 30-stock index are getting louder.

The most frequently mentioned replacement: Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s sprawling conglomerate that has somehow never earned a seat at the Dow’s table despite being one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

What’s happening with Nike

Nike joined the DJIA on September 23, 2013, replacing aluminum maker Alcoa. Nike currently holds an approximate 0.70% weighting in the Dow, making it one of the index’s smallest contributors. The DJIA is price-weighted, meaning a stock’s influence is determined by its share price rather than its market capitalization.

The Dow isn’t like the S&P 500, which mechanically tracks the largest US companies by market cap. The DJIA is curated by a committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, and changes are infrequent, deliberate, and often signal something meaningful about the American economy’s direction.

The Berkshire Hathaway problem

If Nike gets the boot, Berkshire Hathaway is the name that keeps surfacing as a potential replacement. Berkshire is a top-ten US company by market capitalization, owns stakes in dozens of major corporations, and has delivered decades of market-beating returns under Buffett’s stewardship.

So why isn’t it already in the Dow? Berkshire’s Class A stock trades at a price north of $700K per share in recent years, meaning adding it to a price-weighted index would completely distort the Dow’s movements. The committee has Class B shares to consider as a workaround, but historically that hasn’t been enough to push through an addition.

Warren Buffett is stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of 2025, handing the reins to Greg Abel. The company’s businesses, from GEICO to BNSF Railway to its massive equity portfolio, aren’t going anywhere.

Why crypto investors should care, or shouldn’t

There are no crypto tokens tied to Nike’s Dow membership, no on-chain implications of a Berkshire addition, and no observable correlation between DJIA reshuffling and digital asset markets.

When the Dow added Salesforce and dropped ExxonMobil in 2020, it was a statement about technology overtaking energy. The Dow, while culturally iconic, is not the benchmark most institutional money actually tracks. The S&P 500 and its associated ETFs dwarf Dow-linked products in terms of assets under management. A stock getting added to or removed from the Dow triggers far less passive fund rebalancing than an equivalent S&P 500 change would.

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