Nasdaq-100

Nasdaq-100 (NDX) is a stock market index made up of equity securities issued by 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index. The stocks' weights in the index are based on their market capitalizations, with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components. It is limited to companies from a single exchange, and it does not have any financial companies. The financial companies are in a separate index, the Nasdaq Financial-100.

History

The Nasdaq-100 was launched on January 31, 1985, by the Nasdaq. It created two indices: the Nasdaq-100, which consists of industrial, technology, retail, telecommunication, biotechnology, health care, transportation, media and service companies, and the Nasdaq Financial-100, which consists of banking companies, insurance firms, brokerage firms, and mortgage loan companies.

The base price of the index was initially set at 250, but when it closed near 800 on December 31, 1993, the base was reset at 125 the following trading day, leaving the halved Nasdaq-100 price below that of the more commonly known Nasdaq Composite. The first annual adjustments were made in 1993 in advance of options on the index that would trade at the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1994. Foreign companies were first admitted to the Nasdaq-100 in January 1998, but had higher standards to meet before they could be added. Those standards were relaxed in 2002, while standards for domestic firms were raised, ensuring that all companies met the same standards.

Selection criteria

The Nasdaq has refined a series of stringent standards which companies must meet to be indexed. Those standards include:

• Being listed exclusively on Nasdaq in either the Global Select or Global Market tiers.
• Being publicly offered on an established American market for at least three months.
• Having average daily volume of 200,000 shares.
• Being current in regards to quarterly and annual reports.
• Not being in bankruptcy proceedings.

Additionally, since 2014, companies with multiple classes of stock are allowed to have multiple classes included in the index, provided they meet Nasdaq's criteria. Prior to 2014, companies were limited to one class of stock in the index (usually the one with the larger market capitalization).

The index publicly announces all changes, regardless of when they occur, via press releases at least five business days before the change takes place.

Performance

Price history and milestones

The index set highs above the 4,700 level at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000, but fell 78% during the stock market downturn of 2002.

After a gradual 5-year recovery to an intraday high of 2,239.51 on October 31, 2007, the highest reached since February 16, 2002, the index corrected below the 2,000 level in early 2008 amid the late-2000s recession, the United States housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. Panic focusing on the failure of the investment banking industry culminated in a loss of more than 10% on September 29, 2008, subsequently plunging the index firmly into a bear market. The Nasdaq-100, with much of the broader market, experienced a limit down open on October 24 and reached a 6-year intraday low of 1,018 on November 20, 2008.[citation needed]

Amid quantitative easing (QE) from the Federal Reserve and optimism that the 2008 financial crisis was ending, the index embarked on a volatile four-year climb higher, closing above 3,000 on May 15, 2013, for the first time since November 15, 2000. By October 18, 2013, with GOOG passing $1,000 per share for the first time, the index had made a closing high of 3,353.88 and intraday high of 3,355.63, its highest levels since the 2000 United States elections and more than triple the 2008 low.[citation needed]

Record values

List of 1000-point milestones by number of trading days

Annual returns

The following table shows the annual development of the Nasdaq-100 since 1985.

Differences from Nasdaq Composite index

The Nasdaq-100 is frequently confused with the Nasdaq Composite Index. The latter index (often referred to simply as the Nasdaq) includes the stock of every company that is listed on Nasdaq (more than 2,500 altogether).

The Nasdaq-100 is a modified capitalization-weighted index. This particular methodology was created in 1998 in advance of the creation of the Nasdaq-100 Index Trust, which holds portions of all Nasdaq-100 firms. The new methodology allowed Nasdaq to reduce the influence of the largest companies and to allow for more diversification. However, the weights of the stocks were not changed after that, which led to more problems. In May 2011, Nasdaq did a major rebalance of the index to bring it closer to market-cap weighting.[citation needed]

The index is rebalanced quarterly only if:

• One company is worth 24% of the index.
• Companies with a weighting of at least 4.5% make up 48% or more of the index.

The index is rebalanced annually, after the quarterly rebalancing, only if:

• One company is worth 15% of the index.
• The five largest companies by market capitalizations have weights of 40% or more of the index.

Differences from other indices

In addition to its almost complete lack of financial companies, the Nasdaq-100 includes seven companies incorporated outside the United States. Although the S&P 500 Index includes non-U.S. companies, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has never included foreign companies.[citation needed]

As of December 2025, the index's ten companies incorporated in foreign countries are as follows:

• Canada - Shopify, Thomson Reuters
• Cayman Islands (headquartered in Ireland, previously China) - PDD Holdings
• Ireland - Linde plc, Seagate Technology
• The Netherlands - ASML Holding, Ferrovial, NXP Semiconductors
• United Kingdom - Arm Holdings, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

Additionally, the Nasdaq-100 is also the only index of the three that has a regularly scheduled re-ranking of its index each year (in December), ensuring that the largest non-financial companies on Nasdaq are accurately included.[citation needed]

Related indices

In 2006, Nasdaq created a "farm team" index, the Nasdaq Q-50, representing the next fifty stocks in line to enter the Nasdaq-100. With some exceptions, most stocks that are added to the index come up through the Q-50. In 2011, Nasdaq created the NASDAQ-500 to track the 500 largest stocks on Nasdaq, and the Nasdaq-400, tracking those stocks not included in the Nasdaq-100.[citation needed]

Nasdaq has also divided the 100 into two distinct sub-indices; the Nasdaq-100 Tech follows those components who service the tech sector, and the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Tech, which follows those components that are not considered tech companies. The latter index includes noted e-commerce companies Amazon.com and eBay, which are classified as retailers.[citation needed]

Investing in the Nasdaq-100

The Invesco QQQ, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) sponsored and overseen since March 21, 2007, by Invesco, trades under the ticker Nasdaq: . It was formerly called Nasdaq-100 Trust Series 1. On December 1, 2004, it was moved from the American Stock Exchange, where it had the symbol QQQ, to the Nasdaq, and given the new ticker symbol QQQQ, sometimes called the "quad Qs" by traders. On March 23, 2011, Nasdaq changed its symbol back to QQQ. Retail buy and hold investors might prefer to purchase Invesco's similar Nasdaq: QQQM, or "QQQ Mini" which has a lower fee structure, but lacks the liquidity that high-frequency traders need in the traditional QQQ product.

QQQ is one of the most actively traded ETFs in the United States.

The Nasdaq-100 is often abbreviated as NDX, NDQ, NAS100, or US100, in the derivatives markets. Its corresponding futures contracts are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The regular futures are denoted by the Reuters Instrument Code ND, and the smaller E-mini version uses the code NQ. Both are among the most heavily traded futures at the exchange.

Current components

This table is current as of the open of trading on January 20, 2026. An up-to-date list is available in the External links section.

Component changes

Historical components

As of January 2026, 532 companies have been, or will be, components of the index. Of these, only four, Apple, Costco (through its merger in 1993 with Price Club, with Costco, as a separate entity, not becoming a component until at least 1989), Intel and PACCAR, have been components, continuously, since the first dissemination of the index in 1985. Two other current components, KLA Corporation and Micron Technology, were also components when the index started, but have been removed from the index over time for various reasons.

External links