The S&P 500 inclusion effect springboard is back in a big way

That temporary price bump had cooled throughout the 2010s — now it’s heating up again, per a new Goldman Sachs report.

7/24/25 10:48AM

It’s not unusual to see shares pop when a company is set to join the S&P 500, an index now linked to a staggering $20 trillion in global assets. Just last Friday, Block soared 10% after its inclusion was announced, while Datadog spiked 15% on similar news earlier this month.

Known as the “S&P 500 Index Effect,” this short-lived bump is fueled in part by fresh demand from $13 trillion worth of passive funds and ETFs tracking the benchmark, which are required to buy shares of newly added companies.

But over the past decade, this effect had been losing steam. According to a 2023 Harvard study, the average announcement-day return for S&P 500 additions dropped from 9.4% in the 1990s to just 0.8% by the late 2010s — partially because markets got better at absorbing these shocks, and traders got better at predicting inclusions.

Now, though, a new Goldman Sachs analysis suggests the inclusion effect may be staging a comeback.

Since 2021, stocks newly added to the S&P 500 have outperformed the equal-weighted index by an average of 4 percentage points on the announcement day — with nearly three-quarters of those stocks beating the benchmark.

Source matters

One factor driving the revival is that fewer companies are migrating from the S&P MidCap 400 Index. Per Goldman’s estimate, stocks added from outside the S&P 400 have seen average relative gains of 5.3 pp since 2013, while those graduating from the midcap index actually dipped 0.4 pp.

Retail hype may also be adding fuel, with recent entrants like Coinbase, Super Micro Computer, Palantir, and Datadog already beloved by traders ahead of their debut — and tied to popular themes like AI or crypto.

So, which big names could be next in line for America’s flagship index?

Go Deeper: Datadog is now in the S&P 500. These big stocks still aren’t.

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Luke Kawa

Pokémon trading cards skyrocketing in value and GameStop’s collectibles business taking off are two sides of the same coin

The Wall Street Journal’s fantastic piece “The Hot Investment With a 3,000% Return? Pokémon Cards” includes this vignette:

...the cards caught fire among amateur investors during the pandemic. As some investors banded together to spark the GameStop meme stock mania, a more fringe group of traders, also stuck at home and armed with cash from government stimulus, began scooping up Pokémon cards.

And the connection between Pokémon cards and the video game retailer is in fact even closer than that:

GameStop’s collectibles business played a big role in why it smashed Q2 revenue expectations! Sales in this segment exceeded $227 million, while the two analysts that provided forecasts had an average estimate of $170.4 million. Fiscal year-to-date, sales of collectibles make up 25.8% of its revenues, up from 16.4% at this time last year.

The company significantly expanded its footprint in the Pokémon trading card world in 2024 by launching in-store buying and selling of individual cards, and introduced “Power Packs,” which include one card graded at 8 or above by the Professional Sports Authenticator, in its most recent quarter.

As a 35-year-old man who still plays Pokémon (Nuzlockes are peak math + strategy entertainment!), thinks the release of Pokémon Go marked the peak for Western Civilization, and considers Christmas 1998 to be the second-best day of his life because it’s when he got Pokémon Red, I personally view the outperformance of Pokémon cards as being indicative of the power of nostalgia coupled with a drop-off in child-rearing by millennials that leaves more room for discretionary purchases/investments.

And the nostalgia business seems like a great place to be.

The Hot Investment With a 3,000% Return? Pokémon Cards

...the cards caught fire among amateur investors during the pandemic. As some investors banded together to spark the GameStop meme stock mania, a more fringe group of traders, also stuck at home and armed with cash from government stimulus, began scooping up Pokémon cards.

And the connection between Pokémon cards and the video game retailer is in fact even closer than that:

And the nostalgia business seems like a great place to be.

Luke Kawa

Oracle’s hyperscaler competitors lag after the cloud computing giant’s blowout revenue forecast

Oracle’s forecast for mind-blowing revenue growth through its fiscal 2030 is lifting most AI-adjacent stocks today.

However, the ones being left behind in this rising tide, falling or lagging well behind Morgan Stanley’s basket of AI tech beneficiaries (up 5.8% as of 12:22 p.m. ET), are its fellow hyperscalers.

Microsoft and Alphabet, which also have massive cloud divisions, are positive — but only just. Amazon, whose cloud revenue growth was deemed a disappointment relative to peers this quarter, is down 2.8%. Meta is down 1.2%.

This suggests, at the very least, that traders aren’t mapping Oracle’s outlook for Nvidia-like revenue growth onto the other major cloud players or one of their biggest customers.

Nia Warfield

Chewy sinks despite topping Q2 estimates, erasing much of its recent rally

Chewy dropped nearly 16% Wednesday, despite the online pet retailer fetching stronger-than-expected Q2 results and hiking its sales guidance for the year.

The move erased much of a recent blistering run-up for the stock, which had gained 23% off its recent August 5 low through Tuesday.

The company delivered adjusted earnings per share of $0.33 for the quarter, in line with analysts’ consensus forecast of $0.33. Sales jumped nearly 8.6% to $3.1 billion, also above forecasts, with sales to the company’s Autoship customers making up 83% of the total.

Looking ahead: Chewy boosted its full-year sales estimates to $12.5 billion to $12.6 billion, up from $12.3 billion to $12.45 billion. Wall Street was expecting sales of $12.49 billion for the year.

For the current quarter, Chewy guided adjusted EPS to $0.28 to $0.33, compared with the Street’s $0.30 estimate.

Chewy ended the quarter with nearly 21 million active customers, up 4.5% from last year. CEO Sumit Singh said the quarter showed “Chewy’s differentiated value proposition,” citing both customer growth and wallet share gains.

Still, headline net income fell to $62 million, with net margins slipping under cost pressures tied to share-based compensation.

Chewy shares were up 24% year to date going into the print.