What is the Nasdaq 100?
The Nasdaq Stock Market is a global marketplace for buying and selling securities.
Founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the Nasdaq introduced a computerized trading system that allowed for speedy and transparent trades. Setting this new standard attracted emerging tech companies, such as Apple, Amazon, Google Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, and others, to be listed for the trading of public shares.
What Does the Nasdaq 100 Index Measure?
The Nasdaq100 (US-Tech 100) is an index that tracks the movement of a group of shares, similar to the S&P500 (USA500) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (USA 30). It consists of the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq according to market capitalization.
This provides traders with an opportunity to view the collective movements of the Nasdaq’s top companies, notably within the technology sector, which has shown strong growth after the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.
The Nasdaq 100 is a modified market-capitalization weighted index. This style of calculation gives more weighting to the larger market-cap companies on the composite.
What Companies are in the Nasdaq 100?
The Nasdaq100 is made up of some of the world’s largest and most well known companies.
The top 10 listed in 2021 are:
- Apple (AAPL)
- Microsoft (MSFT)
- Amazon (AMZN)
- Meta (FB)
- Alphabet (GOOG)
- Tesla (TSLA)
- Nvidia (NVDA)
- PayPal (PYPL)
- Comcast (CMCSA)
- Adobe (ADBE)
In total, the index actually consists of 102 symbols even though there are only 100 companies on the index. This happens when a company has dual-listings, such as Google’s parent company Alphabet.
Alphabet has both ‘Class A’ (GOOGL) and ‘Class C’ (GOOG) listings. This may also be known as ‘Common shares’ and ‘Preferred shares’. The variations offer different benefits to the shareholder such as voting rights and entitlements to dividend payouts.
Plus500’s NASDAQ 100 offering is named the US Tech 100. CFD traders can also trade CFDs on QQQ*, a popular ETF which tracks the price of NASDAQ 100 futures.
*Subject to operator availability.