📈 Nike's $11.6B Reality Check

The swoosh stumbled to an earnings beat while revenue plunged 10%

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Good Morning


Nike just told Wall Street something CEOs rarely admit: the comeback story you're betting on won't follow a Hollywood script, and the next few quarters might make your stomach churn before your portfolio smiles.

🔎 Market Trends → Wall Street ends slightly higher as US government shutdown looms

And now


⏱ Your daily briefing for Wednesday, October 1, 2025:

MARKET BRIEF
Before the Open

As of market close 09/30/2025.

Pre-Market

  • Pfizer (PFE) with a +6.8% gain, the strongest performer on the S&P 500

  • Albemarle (ALB) with a −6.7% drop, the weakest performer on the S&P 500

Fear & Greed

 

Markets in Review

Shutdown Shmutdown: Dow Sets Record as September Turns Green

S&P 500 +0.41% to 6,688.46. Nasdaq +0.31% to 22,660.01. Dow +0.18% to a record 46,397.89.

The Big Picture:

Wall Street looked at Washington’s brinkmanship and shrugged. History says government shutdowns are brief and mostly market-irrelevant; investors priced in noise and bought earnings power.

Under the hood, leadership stayed broad enough to matter. AI infrastructure enthusiasm—helped by CoreWeave’s $14.2B deal with Meta (META) and halo for Nvidia (NVDA)—kept animal spirits lively even as some software names wobbled.

Commodities helped the calculus: U.S. crude hovered < $63, down double-digits year to date, easing input costs and supporting margins. Lower oil is a tax cut for consumers—unless it’s signaling weaker global demand. That’s the risk.

Market Movers:

  • NVDA ticked higher on AI capacity momentum via CoreWeave; the market keeps rewarding picks-and-shovels for the compute gold rush.

  • Pfizer (PFE) and peers (ABBV, AMGN, MRK) gained on a White House drug-pricing deal framework—policy clarity beats headline risk.

  • Salesforce (CRM) and Paychex (PAYX) slipped; softer confidence and a potential data blackout (if agencies go dark) raise near-term guidance uncertainty.

  • Select e-commerce/consumer tech (e.g., ETSY) retraced after AI-partnership pops—classic buy the rumor, trim the spike.

What They’re Saying:

“If there’s a market reaction here, buy the shutdown.” — Ed Mills, Raymond James policy analyst.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
Events

  • Today: Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) Non-Farm Employment Change - 8:15am

    Why You Should Care: Job creation is an important leading indicator of consumer spending, which accounts for a majority of overall economic activity.

  • Today: Institute for Supply Management - Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) - 10:00am

    Why You Should Care: It is a leading indicator of economic health - businesses react quickly to market conditions, and their purchasing managers hold perhaps the most current and relevant insight into the company’s view of the economy.

Earnings Reports

  • Today: ConAgra Brands, RPM International, Acuity Brands

  • Tomorrow: AngioDynamics

MARKET INSIGHTS
Leading News 

Nike's Bumpy Recovery: Why Smart Money Is Patient

Nike photo for CouponHunt: https://couponhunt.org/store/nike/

Photo Credit: wu yi

Why it matters:

The swoosh stumbled gracefully—revenue beat expectations but management warned the turnaround won't follow a neat spreadsheet trajectory.

Zoom Out:

Nike (NKE) reported fiscal Q1 revenue of $11.6 billion, edging past Wall Street's $11.65 billion estimate. But here's the rub: sales still dropped 10% year-over-year. New CEO Elliott Hill, just six weeks into the job, is essentially telling investors what Benjamin Graham might have called "the intelligent investor's waiting game."

The company's frank admission that recovery will be "not linear" is refreshingly honest in an era of perpetual corporate optimism. Translation: expect quarterly zigs and zags that will test your discipline.

History whispers a useful lesson here. Brand titans often stumble before they soar—think Apple's wilderness years or Starbucks' 2008 reset. The question isn't whether Nike faces headwinds, but whether its competitive moat remains deep enough to weather them.

Key Insights:

  • The inventory riddle: Nike's pulling back on promotional activity while managing channel stuffing issues—behavioral finance 101 suggests this short-term pain could mean long-term pricing power restoration.

  • Leadership premium: Hill's return from retirement signals institutional knowledge matters. He built the North America business before; betting against that track record requires conviction.

  • Valuation breathing room: At current levels, much pessimism is priced in—meaning positive surprises carry asymmetric upside potential for patient capital.

Market Pulse:

"We are encouraged by the progress we're making," Hill noted, emphasizing the company's focus on sport and athlete partnerships—precisely the fundamentals that built the franchise originally.

Bull’s Take:

If you bought Nike for quarterly gratification, you're in the wrong stock. But if you believe brand equity compounds like interest, this messy middle chapter may prove the ideal entry point for multi-year holders.

Market Stories of Note

Uncle Sam Bets $2.26B on Lithium: Nevada Play Gets Real:

Lithium Americas (LAC) shares jumped 22% after the U.S. government converted its loan into a direct equity stake, making Washington a meaningful shareholder in America's largest domestic lithium project. This isn't just industrial policy theater—it's the Treasury Department putting taxpayer capital where the Energy Department's mouth is, signaling that critical mineral independence has moved from PowerPoint to balance sheet. For investors willing to stomach the multi-year construction timeline and commodity price volatility, watching the government de-risk a greenfield mining project offers a rare front-row seat to how nations actually build strategic industries.

FTC Takes Aim at Zillow and Redfin: Antitrust Storm Brewing:

The FTC just fired a legal warning shot at Zillow (Z) and Redfin (RDFN), alleging the real estate platforms violated antitrust laws by allegedly colluding to inflate online rental listing prices—a claim that could reshape how digital housing marketplaces operate. The regulatory logic here matters: if platforms that claim to bring transparency actually coordinate pricing, they're not reducing friction in housing markets but creating a new kind of it, one that regulators won't tolerate in an affordability crisis. For investors, this is a reminder that when companies dominate the information layer of massive markets like housing, regulatory risk compounds alongside network effects—meaning the moat you're paying for today could become the liability you're defending tomorrow.

CRYPTO
Fear & Greed 

 

Headlines

  • Bitcoin Consolidates Above $113K as Bulls Target $116K Breakout Move in the Short-Term (link)

  • Stripe Unveils Stablecoin Issuance Tool With Phantom’s CASH, Expands Into AI Commerce with OpenAI (link)

  • CoreWeave Jumps 8% Pre-Market on Meta AI Deal, Core Scientific Merger Looms (link)

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