The tech sector has outperformed the broader market as measured by the S&P 500 this week and so far in 2011.
PowerShares QQQ (NasdaqGM: QQQ), an exchange traded fund indexed to the Nasdaq-100, has surged this week.
The tech-heavy ETF has pushed through its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. SPDR S&P 500 (NYSEArca: SPY), despite a rally this week, is still below both of these key technical levels. [Nasdaq ETF at Key Test]
Year to date, QQQ has registered a 3.43% return with SPY down 3.47%, and over a five-day period, QQQ is up 5.92% versus SPY up 4.71%.
QQQ is somewhat top heavy in that Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) has a 13.84% weighting, followed by Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT) at 8.86%, Oracle (NasdaqGS: ORCL) at 5.93%, Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG) at 5.85%, and Intel (NasdaqGS: INTC) at 4.54%, so it would be fair to say that AAPL has a heavy influence on the overall performance of this broad sector ETF.
We note that AAPL has registered (including today), five straight up days and is challenging its all-time high of $404.50 a share.
For those investors who believe the current uptrend in QQQ will continue and want to leverage additional potential upside to the same index, ProShares Ultra QQQ (NYSEArca: QLD) is designed to provide 2 times daily leveraged results to the Nasdaq 100 index, and ProShares UltraPro QQQ (NasdaqGM: TQQQ) delivers 3 times the daily leveraged returns.
PowerShares QQQ
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