The S&P just added stocks to its list and ditched a handful of underperformers.
There’s a huge shakeup happening.
These are the biggest stocks moving today.
The S&P 500 and S&P 100 aren’t just scoreboards for the market…
They’re groups of stocks that thousands of investors rely on for yearly gains in hopes of outpacing traditional savings accounts.
And these two indexes aren’t alone… Trillions of dollars sit in funds and ETFs built to mirror them.
Which creates an unusual situation:
When S&P indexes announce a change to the roster, passive funds have no discretion. They HAVE TO buy the incoming names and dump the outgoing ones to continue tracking the bellwethers.
That’s the catalyst I’m playing this week.
There are three additions to the S&P 500 and three removals, plus a parallel S&P 100 reshuffle that swaps out four familiar large caps for four newer ones.
And each of these stocks is in play this week…
My S&P Watchlist
Here’s the list of additions and deletions that I sent to traders on Friday, September 18:
Every incoming stock on the S&P 500 has already run at least 40% in 2026, which raises the question: how much of the index demand is already priced in?
There’s a similar question on the other side of the spectrum too… How much bearish momentum is already priced into the stocks leaving the S&P?
These are the three trades I alerted with respect to the S&P rebalancing:
- BUY NKE 9/25/26 36 CALLS
- BUY TAP 10/16/26 40 CALLS
- BUY P 10/16/26 100 PUTS
Notice anything…?
My Trade Thesis
These are essentially reversion trades.
When a stock’s price extends too far, it eventually switches directions, at least momentarily.
That’s the move I want from a reversion trade, when the stock backtracks after an unsustainable run.
In this case, it looks like I’m playing the opposite of the obvious sentiment in the market:
- A bullish trade on NKE as it’s deleted from the S&P 100.
- A bearish trade on P as it’s added to the S&P 500.
My thesis is that the bull sentiment and bear sentiment are already priced in.
Once the catalyst dropped and the restructuring took place, everyone who would have traded with the obvious sentiment already did. As a result, the stock moves in the opposite direction.
As of Monday, September 21, my trade on NKE is already printing gains:
Just because a catalyst seems bearish doesn’t mean the stock will react that way.
You have to understand the sentiment in the market.
And in this case, people have known about the S&P rebalancing since early September. The announcement was as early as September 7.
Traders and investors had more than enough time to prepare.
That’s how the move was already priced in. That’s what creates these reversion trades.
Stay Street Smart,
Jeff Zananiri
