Nasdaq-100

• 1. Introduction

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  The Nasdaq-100 closed at a record 30,333.18 points on Friday, the 29th of May 2026, after touching an intraday high of 30,470.03 the same day. That figure sits atop a basket of exactly 100 companies trading on the Nasdaq exchange, tracked under the ticker NDX. Retirement funds, options traders and futures desks all watch this number. Yet few could explain why certain technology and retail names sit inside it, while banks, insurers and mortgage lenders never appear at all. Fewer still could explain how a benchmark that began decades ago grew large enough that its own weighting formula eventually needed to be rewritten. What decides which companies earn a spot, and which forces pushed this index from a modest start to today's record levels? And how does this basket differ from the much larger Nasdaq Composite that shares part of its name?

• 2. Two Indices, One Exchange

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  On the 31st of January 1985, the Nasdaq created not one index but two. The Nasdaq-100 gathered industrial, technology, retail, telecommunication, biotechnology, health care, transportation, media and service companies, while a companion, the Nasdaq Financial-100, took in banking, insurance, brokerage and mortgage loan firms instead. The new index opened with a base price of 250. By the 31st of December 1993, that base had climbed to near 800. The following trading day, Nasdaq reset it to 125, leaving the halved Nasdaq-100 price below its better-known Nasdaq Composite counterpart. The first annual adjustments to the index came in 1993. That timing got ahead of new options on the Nasdaq-100, which began trading at the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1994. Foreign companies joined the index for the first time in January 1998, though they initially faced higher standards than domestic firms. Those foreign standards were relaxed in 2002, the same year Nasdaq raised the bar for domestic firms so every constituent answered to the same rules. Only companies that clear a further checklist of criteria actually earn one of the 100 spots.

• 3. The Membership Rules

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  Nasdaq requires any candidate for its top 100 list to be listed exclusively on either the Global Select or Global Market tier of its exchange. Candidates must have traded publicly on an established American market for at least three months, with an average daily volume of at least 200,000 shares. Nasdaq also confirms that a company stays current on its quarterly and annual reports and is not in bankruptcy proceedings. Since 2014, Nasdaq has allowed companies with multiple stock classes to place more than one class in the index if each class meets its criteria. Before that year, a company was limited to a single class in the index, usually the one with the larger market capitalization. Every change to the list gets a public press release at least five business days before it takes effect. That advance notice gives fund managers time to adjust their positions before the swap actually happens.

• 4. Booms And Crashes

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  The index climbed above 4,700 points at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000. It then fell 78% during the stock market downturn of 2002. Quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve and optimism that the 2008 financial crisis was ending fueled a volatile four-year climb. The index closed above 3,000 on the 15th of May 2013, its first time at that level since the 15th of November 2000. By the 18th of October 2013, Google's stock, ticker GOOG, passed $1,000 a share for the first time. That same day the Nasdaq-100 reached a closing high of 3,353.88 and an intraday high of 3,355.63. Those levels marked the highest point since the 2000 United States elections, more than triple the low reached during 2008.

  The index needed 3,143 trading days to close above 1,000 points for the first time, a threshold it crossed on the 8th of July 1997. Climbing from 20,000 to 30,000 points took only 475 trading days, a stretch that ended on the 26th of May 2026. Along the way, single years produced dramatic swings: the index gained 101.95% in 1999 and lost 41.89% in 2008. The index fell 32.97% in 2022, then rebounded 53.81% the following year in 2023.

• 5. Chasing The Right Weight

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  Nasdaq built the modified capitalization-weighted formula behind the index in 1998. The timing preceded the launch of the Nasdaq-100 Index Trust, a fund holding pieces of every Nasdaq-100 company. That formula let Nasdaq shrink the pull of its largest companies and spread influence across more of the index. Nasdaq did not touch the individual stock weights again for years, and that inaction created fresh imbalances. In May 2011, Nasdaq carried out a major rebalance to pull the index back toward straightforward market-cap weighting.

  A quarterly rebalance triggers if one company reaches 24% of the index. It also triggers if companies weighted at 4.5% or more together make up 48% or more of the total. An annual rebalance follows the same quarterly check. It triggers only if one company reaches 15% of the index, or the five largest companies together hold 40% or more of it. That balancing act keeps any single technology giant from single-handedly steering the other 99 stocks in the index.

• 6. Beyond The Big Three

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  The Nasdaq Composite tracks every company listed on the exchange, more than 2,500 in total, which is why people often confuse it with the Nasdaq-100. The S&P 500 also includes companies incorporated outside the United States, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average has never done so. As of December 2025, ten of the Nasdaq-100's companies were incorporated outside the United States. Canada was home to two of them, Shopify and Thomson Reuters. The Netherlands hosted three more: ASML Holding, Ferrovial and NXP Semiconductors. Ireland counted Linde plc and Seagate Technology, while the United Kingdom counted Arm Holdings and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners. The last one, PDD Holdings, was incorporated in the Cayman Islands but headquartered in Ireland, having previously been based in China. The Nasdaq-100 is also the only one of the three major indices with a scheduled re-ranking each December, refreshing which non-financial giants make the list.

  In 2006, Nasdaq introduced the Nasdaq Q-50, a farm-team index tracking the fifty stocks next in line to join the Nasdaq-100. Most new additions to the Nasdaq-100 now rise up through that Q-50 pipeline first. In 2011, Nasdaq also launched the NASDAQ-500, covering its 500 largest stocks, and the Nasdaq-400, covering the largest stocks left out of the Nasdaq-100. Nasdaq splits the 100 further into the Nasdaq-100 Tech, made up of technology-sector components, and the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Tech, made up of everything else. The Ex-Tech group counts Amazon.com and eBay among its members, both classified there as retailers rather than technology companies.

• 7. Trading The Basket

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  Invesco has sponsored and overseen the Invesco QQQ, an exchange-traded fund tracking the Nasdaq-100, since the 21st of March 2007. The fund was formerly named the Nasdaq-100 Trust Series 1. On the 1st of December 2004, the fund moved from the American Stock Exchange, where it had traded as QQQ, to the Nasdaq. There it adopted a new ticker, QQQQ, which traders nicknamed the 'quad Qs.' On the 23rd of March 2011, Nasdaq switched the symbol back to QQQ. Retail investors seeking a lower-fee alternative can choose Invesco's QQQM, nicknamed the 'QQQ Mini.' It lacks the liquidity that high-frequency traders need in the original QQQ though. QQQ itself ranks among the most actively traded exchange-traded funds in the United States.

  Traders in derivatives markets refer to the index by several short names: NDX, NDQ, NAS100, or US100. Its futures contracts trade at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange under the Reuters Instrument Code ND, with a smaller E-mini version trading under the code NQ. Those futures and the ETF both rise or fall on the same underlying decision: which 100 companies Nasdaq keeps on its list.

• 8. The Long Survivors

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  As of January 2026, 532 companies have been, or are set to be, components of the Nasdaq-100 at some point since 1985. Only four of them, Apple, Costco, Intel and PACCAR, have stayed in the index continuously since its first dissemination in 1985. Costco's continuous run is more complicated than it looks. It joined through a 1993 merger with Price Club. As a separate entity, Costco itself had not become a component until at least 1989. KLA Corporation and Micron Technology were also original members back in 1985. Both were later dropped from the index for various reasons before returning to today's lineup.

  Turnover happens constantly: on the 20th of January 2026, Walmart transferred its listing from the NYSE to Nasdaq and took AstraZeneca's place in the index. AstraZeneca, for its part, had been preparing to move its own listing from Nasdaq to the NYSE. Nasdaq also carries out a full reconstitution of the index every December, separate from swaps triggered by delistings or spinoffs. Most exits from the list happen for a simpler reason than mergers or spinoffs. A company just stops meeting the minimum monthly weight requirement Nasdaq sets for staying in the index.