Nasdaq 100

Tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq exchange. Heavily weighted towards technology — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon make up a large share.

The Nasdaq 100 is the premier technology-growth benchmark. The QQQ ETF that tracks it is one of the most traded securities in the world. Its deliberate exclusion of financials makes it a concentrated bet on the growth and innovation economy — software, semiconductors, e-commerce, and biotech.

The index uses a modified market-cap weighting to prevent excessive concentration, capping any individual stock at 24% and requiring quarterly redistribution if the aggregate weight of stocks above 4.5% exceeds 48%. Despite this, the top 5 holdings routinely represent over 40% of the index — making it significantly more sensitive to interest rate moves than the S&P 500 (growth stocks are longer-duration assets whose valuations compress when rates rise).