Netflix and Nike: Buying the Champion and the Comeback Story
Netflix added $25 billion to its share buyback program last month and the stock barely moved.
Nike, the most valuable apparel brand in the world, is trading at a nine-year low and just laid off 1,400 people.
Two of the most recognizable consumer companies on the planet, and the market has decided one is firmly out of style while the other is the safest streaming bet you can make.
I'm buying both.
$50 a week into each, $100 a week total, every Friday until the end of 2028. By then I'll have put in $13,900 between the two. This post is the case for why — and the chart at the end shows what that money could be worth depending on which version of the future shows up.
What you're actually buying when you buy Netflix
Forget the streaming wars story for a second. What Netflix is, in plain English, is a company that figured out how to charge 325 million households around the world a monthly fee and have almost none of them cancel.
That's the entire business. They make shows people will pay for, they raise the price every couple of years, and the money compounds.
The Q1 2026 numbers tell that story cleanly. Revenue was $12.25 billion, up 16% year over year. Operating income jumped 18%.
The cheaper ad-supported tier is now on track to do $3 billion in advertising revenue this year, double what it did in 2025 — and that's before the NFL conversations co-CEO Ted Sarandos confirmed are happening turn into anything real.
Full-year revenue is guided to grow 12–14%. The board just authorized an additional $25 billion buyback on top of the previous one — meaning Netflix is going to spend more buying its own stock this year than it spends licensing content.
The bear case is real, though.
The stock fell 9% after the Q1 print because Q2 guidance came in below what the street wanted. Founder Reed Hastings is leaving the board in June. The P/E sits around 30 — not insane, but priced for everything to keep going right.
If subscriber growth flattens or ad revenue stalls because every TV in America already has the cheaper tier, the stock has room to fall. Analyst price targets span $80 to $151, with a median around $115. That spread tells you Wall Street can't agree either.
What you're actually buying when you buy Nike
Now flip the page. Nike is the world's biggest brand for the only thing humans are guaranteed to keep doing forever — moving.
Walking, running, playing, lifting, lacing up shoes. The brand is in 190 countries. It has Jordan, Converse, an entire infrastructure of athletes and stores and supply chains.
And the stock is at $44, down roughly 50% from its 2021 high of $80.
Fiscal 2025 revenue fell 9.8% to $46.31 billion. Earnings dropped 43%. Greater China revenue is expected to decline 20% in Q4. Hoka and On have eaten meaningful shelf space in running. Anta and Li-Ning have eaten Nike in China. Tariffs are squeezing margins.
The new CEO Elliott Hill, who took over in late 2025 from a 32-year Nike career, is running a turnaround called "Win Now" — and the most honest thing anyone can say is that turnarounds at companies this size take three to five years, and we're maybe one year in.
So why buy it. A few specific reasons.
North America revenue grew 3% last quarter and footwear specifically grew 6% — the home market is responding. The company sits on $8.1 billion in cash, has raised its dividend for 24 consecutive years, and pays you a 3.7% yield to wait.
Morningstar's fair value estimate is $71 against a $44 price. The Wall Street median price target is around $63, with bulls as high as $120.
Nike has had multiple "is the brand dead" cycles before — late 90s, mid 2010s — and come back from each one with a stronger product cycle. The simplest version of the bet: globally dominant consumer brands trading at 50% off don't stay there forever, and getting paid almost 4% a year while the turnaround works itself out is not a bad consolation prize if you're wrong about timing.
The chart: where $50/week into each ends up by end of 2028
Here's the math. I start buying May 3, 2026. $50 into NFLX, $50 into NKE, every week, for 139 weeks until December 31, 2028. That's $6,950 per stock, $13,900 total.
I built three scenarios per stock and combined them:
- Bear assumes both turnarounds fail (NFLX to $80, NKE to $35)
Prices are assumed to drift linearly between today and the 2028 target — real life will be a lot wigglier, which is exactly why DCA works.
In layman terms: even the bear case — where both companies disappoint — only loses about 9% over two and a half years, because DCA forced me to buy more shares when prices were lowest.
Base case puts me at roughly $16,700 on $13,900 in, a 20% gain.
Bull case puts me at almost $20,000 — a 43% gain that would beat almost any index fund over the same period.
That's the asymmetry. Worst case I lose $1,300 of pocket money. Best case I make $6,000 from $100 a week.
Why $50/$50, why both at all
The boring answer is I don't trust anyone — including myself — to predict which of these stories lands first.
Netflix is the safer story today, but at a P/E of 30 there's not as much room for upside surprise. Nike is the riskier story today, but at $44 the bar to clear is on the floor.
If Netflix grows into its valuation while Nike's turnaround works, both go up — different timelines, different magnitudes, but both. Splitting evenly is admitting that I can't tell you which one delivers the better return in 2028, and I'd rather own both than be smug about picking the right one.
The other reason is they hedge each other in a real way.
Netflix benefits from people staying home; Nike benefits from people going outside and moving. Whichever way the post-pandemic consumer mood ultimately settles, one of these two captures it.
They're also at different points in the same arc. Nike was the indispensable consumer brand for thirty years and is now learning humility; Netflix is the indispensable consumer brand right now. Owning both is a way of saying you respect the cycle without trying to time it.
What would change my mind
For Netflix: a serious deceleration in subscriber growth combined with ad revenue missing the $3 billion target by more than 10%, or the NFL talks falling apart and Disney+ getting genuine pricing power back.
For Nike: another year of declining revenue with North America rolling over, or losing the running category outright to Hoka and On at the premium tier.
If either of those happens, I cut the position back and reassess — DCA doesn't mean buying through actual structural decline, it means buying through volatility.
If neither happens, I just keep going.
$100 a week is small enough that I'll keep doing it through whatever the market does, and big enough that by 2028 it might actually matter. That's the only kind of investing I trust myself to do consistently.
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This is not financial advice. I own both NFLX and NKE. I'm sharing my personal research and strategy. Always do your own due diligence before investing.