Key Points
The Invesco QQQ Trust ETF is one of the most popular ways that investors use to add tech exposure to their portfolio.
Since its debut back in 1999, it has one of the best performance records of any ETF in the marketplace.
This ETF lived through the tech bubble of the early 2000s. How did that bear market affect long-term returns?
Thanks to the multidecade bull market in tech stocks, the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ: QQQ) is one of the best-performing exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world. Having launched back in early 1999, it's amassed more than $400 billion in assets under management (AUM), making it one of the five biggest ETFs in the marketplace.
Today, the Nasdaq-100, the index it's based on, has become famously concentrated. Its top five holdings -- Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla -- are all part of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks and account for roughly 1/3 of the entire portfolio.
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Over the course of its 27-year life, it's seen quite a lot. Most notably, it lived through the tech bubble of the early 2000s and experienced more than an 80% drawdown from peak to valley. Despite this early setback, the Invesco QQQ ETF has managed to deliver a total return of 1,340% since its inception.
That means a $1,000 investment made when the fund launched would today be worth about $14,190!
The average annual return of 10.4% that this translates to may not seem terribly impressive on the surface, but that's what a raging bear market will do to returns. If, however, you had invested on Oct. 9, 2002, which was the bottom of that particular recession, that $1,000 investment would have grown by more than 3,613%!
Either way, it's been an incredibly impressive run for the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index.
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David Dierking has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.