QQQ Return Calculator

The NASDAQ-100 index (tracked by QQQ) has had very strong performance, especially in the last decade or so, thanks to its heavy exposure to technology companies. Historically, if you look from QQQ's inception in 1999 to today, the average returns are quite good but include a lot of ups and downs. The early 2000s were rough – QQQ lost a huge amount of value when the dot-com bubble burst (over 80% decline from 2000 to 2002). However, since the early 2010s, QQQ has soared as tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook (Meta) became some of the world's most valuable companies. For example, from 2010 to 2020, QQQ's price increased roughly five-fold (or more, including dividends). Overall, QQQ's long-term ROI has outpaced broad market indexes like the S&P 500, but it has come with higher volatility.

A $1,000 investment in QQQ a decade ago (2015) would have grown substantially. The last 10 years were very favorable for tech stocks. In 2015, QQQ was trading at $99 per share; by 2025, it has reached $605, so your $1,000 would have been worth $6,132 (about 6× your initial investment in 10 years).

QQQ is concentrated in technology and growth companies, which tend to have higher volatility than the overall market. There are a few reasons for this: Tech stocks often have higher valuations and more future-oriented earnings expectations, so they can swing more with investor sentiment. They're also sensitive to factors like interest rates (high-growth stocks can fall hard when interest rates rise, for example). Additionally, tech innovations and disruptions cause rapid shifts – a company can quickly become a huge winner or, conversely, get displaced by new technology. Because QQQ holds mainly tech giants and other Nasdaq firms, its value can jump quickly in good times (as we saw with massive rallies in years like 2020–2021) but also drop sharply in downturns (like during the 2000–2002 crash or the 2022 tech sell-off). In summary, the sector concentration means higher highs and lower lows, i.e., more pronounced volatility in returns compared to a more diversified fund like SPY.

Over the long run, QQQ has delivered higher returns than SPY, but with more pronounced swings. If you compare since QQQ's inception (1999) to now, the journey was very different: QQQ had a dramatic boom and bust in the early 2000s, so if someone bought at the 1999 peak, it actually took them about 15 years to get back to breakeven. Meanwhile, SPY (S&P 500) had a milder ride in the 2000s. However, since the mid-2010s, QQQ surged ahead, powered by the tech sector's growth. In the last 10-15 years, QQQ's annual returns have been higher than SPY's. For example, during the 2010s, QQQ significantly outperformed due to stocks like Apple, Amazon, and Google. So, an investor who held QQQ from the start would see a slightly different timeline of returns (huge early drop then big climb) but ultimately, by 2025, end up with a higher cumulative return than an investor in SPY. The trade-off was enduring more volatility. Many people allocate to both: SPY for stability and QQQ for growth potential.

Yes, QQQ does distribute dividends from its underlying stocks, but the overall yield is quite low (often below 1%) because many NASDAQ-100 companies (like big tech firms) either don't pay large dividends or none at all. The impact of dividends on QQQ's total return is therefore smaller compared to an index like the S&P 500. Still, those dividends slightly boost the ROI when reinvested. Our ROI calculator uses adjusted prices for QQQ, so any dividends that were paid out by QQQ's holdings are counted in the total return. Essentially, if QQQ had, say, a 0.5% dividend yield annually, reinvesting that won't change the story dramatically, but it does add a bit of extra growth over time. In any comparison of QQQ's performance, it's best to look at total return (including dividends) versus just price change, even though for QQQ the difference isn't huge due to the low dividends.