Nasdaq-100

Nasdaq-100 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.
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.
Amid quantitative easing 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.

Record values

List of 1000-point milestones by number of trading days

Milestone	Date of Record	Trading Days
1,000	July 8, 1997	3,143
2,000	January 11, 1999	381
3,000	November 18, 1999	217
4,000	February 8, 2000	55
5,000	January 6, 2017	4,255
6,000	September 13, 2017	172
7,000	January 26, 2018	93
8,000	July 24, 2019	374
9,000	January 13, 2020	119
10,000	June 10, 2020	103
11,000	August 3, 2020	37
12,000	August 31, 2020	20
13,000	January 8, 2021	90
14,000	April 15, 2021	66
15,000	July 23, 2021	69
16,000	November 3, 2021	72
17,000	January 19, 2024	554
18,000	February 22, 2024	23
19,000	June 5, 2024	72
20,000	July 2, 2024	18
21,000	November 7, 2024	90
22,000	December 16, 2024	26
23,000	July 17, 2025	144
24,000	September 12, 2025	40
25,000	October 8, 2025	18
26,000	October 28, 2025	14

Annual returns

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

Year	Closing level	Change in Index in Points	Change in Index in %
1985	132.29
1986	141.41	9.12	6.89
1987	156.25	14.84	10.49
1988	177.41	21.16	13.54
1989	223.84	46.43	26.17
1990	200.53	−23.31	−10.41
1991	330.86	130.33	64.99
1992	360.19	29.33	8.86
1993	398.28	38.09	10.57
1994	404.27	5.99	1.50
1995	576.23	171.96	42.54
1996	821.36	245.13	42.54
1997	990.80	169.44	20.63
1998	1,836.01	845.21	85.31
1999	3,707.83	1,871.81	101.95
2000	2,341.70	−1,366.13	−36.84
2001	1,577.05	−764.65	−32.65
2002	984.36	−592.69	−37.58
2003	1,467.92	483.56	49.12
2004	1,621.12	153.20	10.44
2005	1,645.20	24.08	1.49
2006	1,756.90	111.70	6.79
2007	2,084.93	328.03	18.67
2008	1,211.65	−873.28	−41.89
2009	1,860.31	648.66	53.54
2010	2,217.86	357.55	19.22
2011	2,277.83	59.97	2.70
2012	2,660.93	383.10	16.82
2013	3,592.00	931.07	34.99
2014	4,236.28	644.28	17.94
2015	4,593.27	356.99	8.43
2016	4,863.62	270.35	5.89
2017	6,396.42	1,532.80	31.52
2018	6,329.96	−66.46	−1.04
2019	8,733.07	2,403.11	37.96
2020	12,888.28	4,155.21	47.58
2021	16,320.08	3,431.80	26.63
2022	10,939.76	−5,380.32	−32.97
2023	16,825.93	5,886.17	53.81
2024	21,012.17	4,186.24	24.88
2025	25,249.85	4,237.68	20.17

Differences from Nasdaq Composite index

The Nasdaq-100 is frequently confused with the Nasdaq Composite Index. The latter index includes the stock of every company that is listed on Nasdaq.
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.
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.
As of December 2025, the index's ten companies incorporated in foreign countries are as follows:

Canada - Shopify, Thomson Reuters
Cayman Islands - 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, ensuring that the largest non-financial companies on Nasdaq are accurately included.