Wall Street Has Entirely Abandoned This Absolute $11 Billion Dividend King—Here Is the 1 Aggressive Bargain I Am Accumulating on Repeat

I keep hitting the buy button on Nike (NYSE:NKE | NKE Price Prediction), and every fresh leg down only makes the case stronger to me. The stock is down 33.33% year to date and down 30.03% over the past year, sitting at $41.82 while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) keep printing fresh highs. Wall Street has walked away. I have done the opposite.

My thesis is simple. This is a global athletic utility, not a struggling retailer, and the bear case is fixated on a self-inflicted wound. Management is deliberately throttling product shipments to purge older inventory and end the aggressive retail discounting that cheapened the brand, while core high-margin categories like Running and Global Football quietly post double-digit growth. A company still pulling in $11.28 billion of quarterly revenue does not break because one geography wobbles for a few quarters.

Three Reasons I Keep Adding

First, the dividend. Nike just declared a $0.41 quarterly payout, extending what the company itself calls its 24th consecutive year of increasing dividend payouts. The Alpha Vantage record actually shows uninterrupted growth running back through 1999, a streak that survived 2008 and 2020 without a flinch. Layer that on top of an $18 billion buyback authorization approved in June 2022, with roughly $12.1 billion deployed and 124.4 million shares retired through August 31, 2025, and the capital return engine is doing the heavy lifting while I wait.

Second, the earnings are quietly compounding past the doom narrative. Nike has now beaten Wall Street estimates four quarters in a row. Q3 FY26 produced EPS of $0.35 against a $0.28 estimate, a 24.25% surprise. The “Win Now” strategy is visible in the segment data: NIKE Wholesale grew 5% to $6.5 billion and North America revenue rose 3% to $5.03 billion. CEO Elliott Hill told shareholders, “NIKE is in the middle innings of our comeback.”

Third, the insiders are voting with their wallets. Hill personally bought 47,320 shares on April 13, 2026 at roughly $42.27, a price almost identical to today’s. Directors Tim Cook, John Rogers, and Robert Swan also bought in the same window, clustered between $42.27 and $43.34. When the operator and the board buy at my cost basis, I pay attention.

The Risk I Refuse To Dismiss

Greater China is the real bruise. Revenue there fell 7% reported and 10% currency-neutral, and tariffs in North America have compressed gross margin by 130 basis points in Q3 alone. CFO Matthew Friend has flagged that these pressures will keep weighing on results through the rest of the calendar year. That is real. It is also priced in. The stock trades at a P/E near 28 against a five-year drawdown of 70.57%, and Polymarket is currently pricing an 88.5% probability that Nike beats the next quarter. Smart money is not pricing in extinction.

Analyst consensus still sits at $58.72 against today’s $41.82, with 16 buy ratings versus only 2 sells. I am collecting a rising dividend on the most valuable swoosh on earth while the CEO buys alongside me. That is why the buy button stays warm, and why I plan to keep pressing it until the rest of the market remembers what it is looking at.

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